When A Lioness Fights
by kayly silverstorm
Summary: Hermione Granger, master spy, and Severus Snape, spymaster to the Order. An unlikely partnership, forged to defeat the Dark Lord on his own ground. But to do so, they must confront their own darkness within. Spying, torture, angst and love. AU after fifth
1. Prologue

Disclaimer: All the characters and settings belong to the glorious J.K. Rowling, and I have no profit in mind, only some fun…

Prologue

He had known that she would be there, but when she stepped out of the shadows by the window, his breath caught for a moment. She looked so different. Six and a half years ago, he had alreadey seen her vast potential when she had entered the Great Hall to be sorted into her house. He had known that she would be special, brighter than the others, and extremely courageous, but nothing had prepared him for the graceful majesty, the quiet determination that filled her eyes now.

"Professor Dumbledore", she finally acknowledged his presence with a short tilting of her head.

"Miss Granger", he answered, not a hint of a smile in his eyes, "please sit down. What was it you wished to tell me so urgently?"

She chose a high backed leather armchair, sat down and carefully arranged her robes around her. Her letter had been odd – urgently she had stressed the need to talk to him immediately, all in her precise, neat handwriting that showed nothing of her haste.

"I wanted to inform you", she began after a moment of silence calmly, "that tonight I have joined the ranks of the Death Eaters. In order to earn Voldemort´s trust, I have told him that Severus Snape has been working as a double agent for the past years. Therefore, it wouldn´t be wise to let him attend another meeting, at least not if he wants to survive. I will report any information that I gain immediately to you, but I must ask that my identity as a spy will remain a complete secret. No one must know, especially not Professor Snape."

Her well structured little speech, delivered in a controlled and cool voice, had left the Headmaster speechless.

"May I offer you a sweet, my dear?", he asked rather helplessly, to stop the silence from getting too big.

"Yes, thank you." She took a sherbert lemon, unwrapped it and popped it into her mouth.

He watched her as she leaned back in her armchair, her face unreadable. What, by the gods, had she done?

"I´m afraid I don´t quite understand, Miss Granger", he finally said.

"There is nothing to understand, Headmaster. Nor is there anyhting to discuss. I thought it wise to inform you as soon as possible, if only to keep Professor Snape from danger. Now that everything is said, I will retire to my room."

"But I can´t allow you to do that, dear child." She had already stood up when he answered, and the way she looked down on him made him feel cold inside. She had become so beautiful, but her face looked like a mask, bathed in cool indifference.

"You have no choice, Professor. Due to my use of the time turner, I am eighteen, legally of age, and can choose what I wish to do. If you won´t let me attend school while spying for you, I will quit Hogwarts. If you won´t let me report to you, I will find someone else who will be more than willing to use my information. I am a Death Eater now, and you can´t change it. Consider well if you want to throw away your advantages. And don´t forget to inform Professor Snape."

"But Miss Granger..."

"Good night, Headmaster."

She left without a look back. But he stared after her, unthinking, unbelieving, and, for once, without the slightest clue of what was going on. She had shattered his control in a heartbeat, and he had no idea how to get it back.

A/N: This is just a teaser – if you like it, review and I will update soon.

I apologize for any mistakes I might have made – I´m not a native speaker, so be gentle with me!


	2. Rising and Falling

Rising and Falling

Severus Snape, renowned Potions Professor of Hogwarts, felt better than he had for more than two years. He took a sip of the dark red wine and rejoiced at the taste, at the feeling of warmth that formed in his stomach. He hadn´t dared to drink wine for such a long time.

Three months ago Dumbledore had stepped into his room in the middle of the night, shortly informing him that Voldemort knew now about his betrayal, that there would be no dressing up as a Death Eater and attending the meetings anymore, and had turned to leave again.

Snape had always known that he wasn´t the only source of information for Dumbledore, that the old wizard had ways of finding things out that went beyond his imagination. He had never asked before. But that night, there had been a look in Dumbledore´s eyes, a despair and tiredness, that made him ask about it.

"Who has betrayed me, Albus?"

"Be glad, Severus", had been his only answer, "Be glad that it is finally over."

But the headmaster hadn´t looked glad.

Severus took a bite from the dinner the houselves had prepared as excellently as ever, and had to suppress a smile from reaching his lips.

He had been lost in the beginning. With the huge burden of spying stripped from his shoulders he had felt naked, useless. And he was in even more danger now than before. Every follower of Voldemort would want him dead and despite what Dumbledore seemed to think, the school wasn´t what one could call a safe place. Parents visiting, students sympathizing with the Death Eater´s belief – there could be enemies behind every corner. But he had walked the school anyway, night after night, alone with the shadows and the whispering of the portraits, perhaps out of a reckless need to get his life back under control, perhaps because he didn´t really wish this life to continue.

But then, after weeks of restlessness, of pacing and cursing, he had woken up one morning and understood what a fool he was. As much as he despised that traitor in their midst, that worthless bastard who had turned him in, he had – unwillingly – given a new life to Severus. He was free now. He could continue the life he had thrown away foolishly so long ago by turning to Voldemort.

After years of hiding in the dark, he had opened his eyes again, and what he had found was a world of beauty, a world well worth living in. The pleasures he had denied himself for so long were open to him once more, friendship, comfort, the joy of knowledge and the rich world of his senses, and enjoying them without fear, without a feeling of guilt, was a revelation. This stew for example…

A pain in his side tore him away from his thoughts. Filius Flitwick, sitting to his left at the long teachers´ table, leaned over to him and whispered: "Your face is doing things entirely not appropriate for our brooding Potions Master, Severus."

He had been grinning again, he realized belatedly. The school was full of rumours that the greasy git had finally gone mad, grinning at nothing while simply standing in front of a window, for once not even trying to deduce house points. But they couldn´t know how good it felt to bathe in the warmth of the sun.

Severus let the smile continue for a moment and nodded over to Flitwick before returning to the deep scowl of the ever feared Potions Master. It would not do to slip in front of the students – a human Severus Snape would probably shock them to death.

Continuing on his stew, he let his eyes roam. Dinner in the Great Hall was as noisy as any other meal, with students shouting, laughing, talking on top of their voices and occasionally even running from table to table.

Only the seventh years looked a bit subdued. Nearly nine moths to their exams and they were already driving each other insane. Not that it was very difficult for them, Severus had always considered teenagers to be on the brink of insanity anyway. But it would be hard to keep them working over the next year if they were already cracking up now.

His eyes rested on the Gryffindor table, where the two lost remnants of the golden trio were talking quietly, the empty place between them betraying the absence of the only brain they seemed to possess. Miss Granger was missing a meal again, probably in the library, hunching over some assignment or self-appointed project. He had seen her there yesterday, diligently consuming some oversized book. The dark circles under her eyes and the cramped line of her shoulders had betrayed her tiredness.

For one moment, Severus had had the impossible notion to sit down beside her and tell her not to work so hard, to enjoy her life instead, but he banished the thought quickly. That would have made her faint probably.

But the Granger girl had changed, too. Her work had been flawless as ever since the beginning of the new year, but her essays had lost some of their… epic quality, and her participation in class had been tuned down to one or two well phrased comments per lesson. Perhaps the little know-it-all had finally found out what life really was about.

He smirked. The star pupil finally turning into a human being – that would give him material to tease Minerva into the next century.

He turned to his left, where Remus Lupin was shovelling a ridiculous amount of food onto his spoon. After the Ministry´s fiasco that was unofficially labelled as the "Umbridge idiocy" now, Fudge and his minions had stopped interfering altogether, and the parents had finally realized that whatever the matter, Dumbledore seemed the best man to handle it. With Lucius and many of the other Death Eater parents out on the run, there had been no one to protest against Lupin´s return to the post of Defence against the Dark Arts teacher, and the enthusiastic reactions of the students had confirmed the Headmaster's decision.

"Ready for yet another test?"

Lupin nodded, but continued chewing for a moment.

"Just let me finish this excellent stew, Severus. To resist the Imperius, I have to have a full belly."

The had started to experiment on a better way of resist the Imperius curse, strengthening the assaulted with the help of some potions Severus had started to develop over the last months. Being finally able to return to his scientific work, to delve into experiments and researches again, was definitely another point on the plus side of his new situation. He nodded, and, after a moment of hesitation, reached over and padded Lupin on the back.

"I will start the preparations then. Meet me in half an hour."

With a nodded greeting to the rest of the staff, he left the table and the Great Hall, his black clothes billowing behind him like some huge, dark animal.

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"She´s doing it again! I hate it when she does this!"

Ron had resumed pacing once more. Harry would have been tempted to examine the common room´s carpet for signs of extreme use, had he not felt about as angry as Ron. Angry and worried.

"I don´t understand it!", Ron repeated himself over again, "I mean, she´s not in the library. She´s not in her room. We knocked about a hundred times, and she must respond, for all she knows we could be a student in need!"

Hermione had, to nobody´s surprise, become Head Girl this year, and besides the privileges of using the restricted section of the library and walking the corridors to her liking, she had received a room of her own, opening to the common room of the Gryffindor´s as well as to the corridor near it.

"You didn´t behave like a student in need, Ron", Harry commented dryly, "Banging on her door and shouting Open this fucking door, Hermione Granger, or I will murder your cat´ doesn´t qualify as a cry for help, anyway."

Ron stopped in front of Harry and stared down at his friend angrily.

"Aren´t you worried at all?"

"I am. Of course I am", Harry sighed, "But we can´t make her tell us. She obviously wants to be alone, and there´s nothing we could do about it."

"We are her friends. She should be telling us everything. WE are telling HER everything, for God´s sake!", Ron complained.

"If only we still had the Marauder´s Map", Harry was staring at the fireplace angrily, as if thinking of a way how to hex it.

The Marauder´s Map, invaluable companion for so many years of trouble making and being out after hours, had been lost to the fire at the end of their last year. It had been lying on a table near the fireplace when Hermione had walked by, accidentally brushing it into the flames with the rim of her cloak. Harry and Ron had been suspicious at first – Hermione had always been against them keeping it - but she had been so sincerely sorry that they had finally believed her and accepted her fervent apologies.

After all, her acting skills weren´t that good, were they?

Harry sighed again. The map would have shown them Hermione´s whereabouts in an instance, but now they had no other possibility but to wait and question her when she returned.

"Is Neville still standing guard in front of the other entrance?", he asked Ron.

"I´ll take a look."

Ron climbed back into the common room some minutes later and nodded satisfied. "She has no way to get around him", he reported, "Neville´s as determined as we are."

"Then there is nothing to do. Care for a game of chess?", Harry asked and was rewarded with the first real smile of the evening.

Five hours later, when they had nearly given up on Hermione, so tired that keeping their eyes open seemed too much of an effort, the portrait hole opened finally.

A very tired an grumpy looking Hermione climbed through.

"Hermione!", Ron´s enthusiastic call made her jump. Her hand darted to her pocket before she realized who had surprised her, but when she saw Ron and Harry, she settled for unnerved glaring instead.

"Shouldn´t you two be in bed?", she asked and made for a chair, but before she had reached it, her step faltered and she had to support herself by leaning against a wall.

"Are you all right, Mione?"

"Yes Harry, thank you, I´m just a bit tired."

"Then why have you been away for so long? And where?", Ron demanded angrily, "We´ve been trying to find you for hours."

"So it was you two who stationed Neville in front of my door? By the way, he has fallen asleep. One of you should go and collect him."

She finally reached the sofa and carefully lowered herself. _She moves like an old woman_, Harry realized suddenly, his worry for Hermione reaching a new level. She had always been so energetic, but now she seemed worn, spent in a strange sort of way.

"Are you sure you´re all right?"

He sat beside her and took her hand, "Only we´re worried, Hermione. You spend less and less time with us, we can´t find you half the time, and you´re not looking very well. Don´t you think you overdo this schoolwork thing a bit?"

She sighed, but couldn´t suppress a smile when Ron sat down on her other side and gave her one of those puppy-looks that seemed to melt all the girls of the Gryffindor tower.

"I really am okay, guys", she reassured them, "But there is a special project I´m doing – don´t groan like that! – and Professor McGonagall didn´t want me to tell anybody. Well, in fact, she has taken me as an apprentice, and because she is not allowed to do that officially before we graduate, no one must know yet."

"Hermione, that´s great!"

"Congratulations!"

"Thanks, but keep it secret, will you?"

Suddenly, both boys found themselves in a strong embrace. For one moment, Hermione clung? To them, holding them as close as she could, then she let go and stood up.

"I´m really sorry that we have so little time together, but you do understand that this is important for me, don´t you? I have to do it, and if I seem a bit tired at times, it´s a price I´m willing to pay. Besides, Professor McGonagall wouldn´t let me do something that is bad for me, would she?"

They nodded, and after some small talk about school and Seamus´ new girlfriend, Harry and Ron left for their dorm. Ron seemed quite happy with her explanation, but Harry felt that there was something not quite right with her whole explanation. She seemed desperate to make them believe her story, too desperate to make it entirely credible.

But he knew Hermione well enough to know that she would only built walls around her if he questioned too closely. Before they disappeared, Harry turned back and found Hermione watching them, a strange look on her face. Pain, love and something else mingled together into a look that make his heart ache. He wouldn´t sleep well that night.

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A/N Look at it! An Update! It´s all your wonderful reviews that did it, thank you so much!

Next chappie has Severus and Hermione meeting, some drama, a furious potion master and what is Draco doing in the middle of it all?

Review! It makes the writer work so much faster!


	3. Being Betrayed

A/N: This chapter is dedicated to my brother, for his support and encouragement. Enjoy it!

Being Betrayed

Carefully, she closed the secret passageway and sealed it, reactivating the charm that protected it from prying eyes. A small sigh escaped her tight lips. Her side screamed pain at her. She was still bleeding where the slicing hex had gotten her, despite from the little tricks she had learned by now, and she had pressed her teeth together so hard to keep herself from making a sound that her head now nearly hurt as bad as her side. She needed potions, a shower and then her bed.

"Granger!"

She whirled around, wand at the ready, but when she saw who had sneaked up behind her, she let her hand fall down to her side again. _I really must be getting tired_, she thought angrily, _To let him come so near_.

"Draco. What are you doing here?"

"Waiting for you", he closed in on her, his voice nervous but determined, "We have to talk."

Gods no, not tonight. She couldn´t stand any of this now.

"Definitely not. It´s past midnight and I have better things to do than listening to your whining. Go to bed."

She tried to walk past him, but he turned with her and caught her between his arms, pressing her to the cold dungeon wall behind her. She wasn´t a match for him tonight. Not without risking to hurt him, and she didn´t want to do that. Insufferable or not, he only cared for her.

"I can´t stand by any longer, Hermione. You are not simply attending the meetings, I know that now. It is too dangerous", he hissed, very close to her face now. Too close for her liking.

"What´s too dangerous or not is for me to decide, Malfoy."

"If you won´t tell Dumbledore, Granger, I will do it. You need better support, medical care and so on . You could die on your way back and no one would find out about it!"

"Don´t be ridiculous", she hissed back, trying to free herself, but he pressed in on her even harder. One of his arms brushed her side, and she cried out as the pain intensified.

"What is the matter", he asked, afraid now and touching her side softly with his hand. When he brought it up to his eyes, it was bloody.

"Granger, what have they done to you? Take of your cloak!"

"Let me go this instance, Malfoy, or you will pay for it!"

She tried to hit him now, fighting back with hands and feet, but he was stronger than she and when he ripped open her cloak and shirt, she couldn´t suppress an enraged scream, "You´re hurting me! Let go!"

Suddenly, she was free. She heard Malfoy crashing against the opposite wall of the corridor and slid down alongside the wall, cradling her side and the left arm where old wounds had opened up again. She was a mess. She should get into a classroom and clean herself up a bit before she entered the common room. Harry and Ron would start a riot when they´d see her like this. It would certainly give fuel to the rumour of an abusive boyfriend that had been spread by one of those idiot girls. When she would find out who…

Hermione mentally slapped herself. She was babbling nonsense. No time for that. Commanding herself to get up and going, she raised her head again, only to look up into the dark eyes of Professor Snape.

-----------------------------

Nightmares were something Severus could have done without. This one had been especially nasty, the full programme with dark clothed shadows hovering around him, maniac laughter and blood, blood everywhere.

He was used enough to these nightmares to know that there would be no sleeping for the next hours, not if he didn´t resort to some Dreamless Sleep Potion, but his stocks had run low and he would have to get a bottle from the infirmary's supplies.

Sighing, he left is warm and comfortable bed. A flick of his wand lighted a fire and he dressed quickly, choosing simple black trousers and a shirt of the same colour. After a moment´s hesitation, he put on his robe, too, although leaving it unbuttoned. There shouldn´t be any students running around at this time of the night, but one could never be sure, especially not with Potter running loose in the castle. The boy was yet another nightmare Severus could have done without.

He made no noise as he walked through the dark corridors of the dungeon. Slytherins were seldom out after curfew, or at least only once during their time at Hogwarts. He could be very convincing if he thought it necessary, and although his students respected him and used to seek him out with their problems, a dose of healthy fear could never be wrong. Or so he had always thought until very recently.

But as if to mock his confidence in the Slytherins, a noise was suddenly heard. He could distinguish the voices of a boy and a girl, he angry and she with a hint of panic. Speeding up, he reached a turning, and when he rounded it, he came into view of the nightly disturbance.

Draco Malfoy and a girl. He had ripped her shirt open and was touching her. She screamed at him, trying to put some distance between them, but Draco was certainly stronger and he seemed very determined. Draco. He had trusted the boy!

Dark rage welling up inside him, Severus crossed the distance between him and Malfoy. He grabbed him by the arm, hurling him away from the girl and into the opposite wall. It took him only a moment to put Draco into a full body-bind, taking his wand from him and also collecting that of the girl that lay on the floor a short distance away, but when he turned around again, the girl had already crumbled down to the floor, holding her arm and muttering under her breath.

He crouched down beside her, giving her time to recover before he would force her to deal with him.

When she looked up, directly into his eyes, it was a shock.

"Miss Granger", his voice was hoarse, "Are you all right?"

What a stupid question! He could have slapped himself, of course she wasn´t all right, she had nearly been raped by his personal favourite student, and was now in very close proximity to her most hated teacher. She would probably become hysterical in a moment.

But again, she surprised him.

"Bloody fucking shit", she muttered, shying away from him and rising to her feet with as much grace as she could manage, "What are you doing here?"

If this was the result of a shock, it was the strangest one Severus had ever witnessed. And he had had quite his share of distressed girls in similar situations. She should be sobbing into his shirt, or screaming hell and murder, but instead she was standing very upright, her chin lifted high into the air.

Then she strode over to Malfoy and ended the charm on his body.

"That should teach you, Draco", she commented absently.

As Draco rose unsteadily, Severus finally remembered to close his mouth and resume his position as the teacher in control. He strode over, separated the befuddled Malfoy and the Granger girl, and grabbed Draco´s arm.

"You wouldn´t care to inform me what this was all about, Draco", he stated icily. It definitely wasn´t a question.

But instead of cowering before his very angry teacher, Draco turned to Hermione again.

"Shall I tell him, Granger, or will you do it?"

"Don´t you dare, Malfoy", she hissed back in a voice that nearly matched Severus´s, "Don´t you tell a word!"

Severus thought it wise to take action. "You will both come with me", he ordered and started leading Draco toward his office.

"I do not think so, Professor Snape", Hermione answered coolly, "Draco and me had nothing but a slight misunderstanding. I think I would rather go to bed than discuss this petty matter."

"Miss Granger, you will follow me to my office or lose about a hundred house points", she was turning around to leave anyway, "And have detention with me for the next two months."

That stopped her. She searched his look of barely controlled fury for a moment, then nodded slightly and followed him without another word.

Inside his office, Severus lowered himself behind his desk, leaving the two students standing in front of him. Normally, he would have separated them immediately, but despite what had happened to her, Miss Granger didn´t seem to be intimidated in the least. On the opposite, it was Draco who looked frightened and nervous, his eyes darting forth and back between his Professor and Hermione Granger.

"Now. I want answers."

"As I already said, Professor, it was nothing worth mentioning. Draco met me in the corridor and we started quarrelling. We may have overdone it a bit, but still it was nothing but a slight disagreement."

"It looked like more to me. In fact, if I had to go by appearances, I would assume that Malfoy tried to rape you, Miss Granger, in a rather violent way. You don´t have to be afraid to tell the truth, he won´t be able to hurt you anymore after this."

She didn´t look afraid, rather slightly amused. One moment he expected her to start laughing, but she controlled herself and simple shook her head of unruly curls.

"Ridiculous", she answered coolly, "I told you everything there is to know. Draco has no more fault than I do. May I leave…"

"Hermione! You must tell him!"

Draco had interrupted her, again turning towards her and taking her arm. He scanned her face intently, with an unhappy, pleading look on her face.

"Tell me what?", Snape inquired irritatedly, "Mr. Malfoy, if there is anything I should know, you had better tell me this minute, or you will have to face the dire consequences."

"Hermione, please!"

"Don´t, Draco. Don´t betray me!"

But Draco had obviously decided against Miss Grangers wish. He turned back to Severus, cautiously moving away from the girl who looked ready to attack him.

"I have to inform you that Hermione Granger is a Death Eater, Professor. She is spying for Dumbledore. But I have reason to believe that she is keeping things from him and that she is in danger."

Clearly, they had both gone mad. He watched them quietly, not believing for a second what Draco had said. The boy looked unhappy enough – were that tears standing in his eyes? The girl´s face had become a mask a again, so cold and lifeless that Severus shuddered involuntarily. Clearly there was something wrong with her. He would have to take her to McGonagall to do some girl talk. Or Gryffindor talk, he didn´t know what was worse.

"Nonsense, Mr. Malfoy. Stupid lies will not save you from anything. This girl could never be a Death Eater."

"You think so Professor? Show him, Hermione", Draco closed the distance between himself and the girl, "Show him!"

"Don´t touch me Draco", she said in a quiet voice that didn´t seem to belong to this passionate girl. It was a warning Severus would have paid attention to.

But Draco didn´t. In one swift movement he grabbed her arm and ripped open the sleeve of her shirt. Severus had already sprung up and rounded his table when his face fell on the section of skin that Draco had exposed.

It was the Dark Mark.

There was no question to it. It couldn´t be anything else. No tattoo, no charm would look like this, it was the real thing.

Hermione Granger was a Death Eater.

"To the headmaster", Severus whispered, his face suddenly drained of all blood, "This minute!"

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A/N: That´s definitely your wonderful reviews making me update so fast. Keep them going, and I´ll keep writing - promised!

And poor Severus - he´s quite in for a shock in the next chapter!


	4. To the Headmaster, Part I

To the Headmaster, Part I

Severus practically stormed the Headmaster´s office, with Miss Granger and Draco trailing behind him.

Dumbledore looked up, the ever present twinkle in his eyes.

"My dear boy", he greeted him pleasantly, "How energetic you are tonight. Would you like some hot chocolate?"

"How could you do that to an innocent girl, you fool?", Snape practically screamed at the old wizard.

Only now did Dumbledore take in the two silent figures behind the dark man. His face turned serious in an instant.

"What happened, Miss Granger? Mr. Malfoy?"

"You let a child become a Death Eater, and you didn´t even think it necessary to inform me, that´s what happened!", Severus shouted.

"Professor Snape witnessed a little disagreement between me and Draco, Headmaster", Hermione informed Dumbledore calmly, "Unfortunately, Draco thought it necessary to tell a rather fantastic story and the Professor overreacted a bit. Now, could you please tell Professor Snape to mind his own business and let me be!"

"The hell I will", Snape was still shouting, but then the thought of his students crossed his mind, how delighted they would be of seeing him so completely out of control, and he pulled himself together enough to lower his voice to a tolerable level, "I want some answers."

"I am afraid it won´t be that easy, Miss Granger." Dumbledore sighed and watched the three intruders unhappily. Severus, completely pale and virtually shaking with rage, Draco, nervous and miserable, and Hermione, untouchably cool as always, a perfect actress, a perfect mask.

"Now that Professor Snape knows, he will have to be informed fully."

"Can´t you obliviate him, Headmaster?"

The hissing breath Severus was drawing in told Dumbledore that he would start shouting soon again. He made a calming gesture and was rewarded with general silence.

"Please sit down", he repeated, "all of you. If this talk is really necessary we should have it in a civilised manner, not shouting at each other. Now Miss Granger, do you wish to bring Professor Snape up to date?"

"As it is you who deems this necessary, I will happily leave the honour to you", she answered stiffly. Then she turned her eyes to the huge window and seemed to lose all interest in the conversation.

Dumbledore sighed again and leaned back in his chair for a moment, absently massaging his temples.

"About three months ago", he began after a moment, "Miss Granger sought me out and informed me about her introduction into the circle of Death Eaters. I must say that up to this point I hadn´t had the slightest idea of what she was doing. I certainly didn´t "make" her do it, and I was more than unhappy with her decision."

He directed a tired smile toward Hermione, who was still ignoring the whole group. As this was all completely ridiculous, her back seemed to inform the men, she was not willing to participate in it.

"I was trying to dissuade her from her actions at first, but she was well prepared, and there was no way to stop her but using force."

"You should have done that."

"I don´t think so, Severus. She may seem a child to you, but there is more to Miss Granger than meets the eyes. Over the last months, she has been invaluable to us, her information detailed and flawless. Apparently, she has gained Voldemort´s trust faster than anyone before, and she has risen quickly within the group."

"This is nonsense!", Snape exploded suddenly, "what should Voldemort want with a useless mudblood like her? Girls like her are good for some fun, but he would never allow her to become a Death Eater!"

"Severus", the stern voice of Dumbledore sounded furious, "You will not use such terms in this school!"

"Oh please, Headmaster! You send Miss Granger into torture and rape, but can´t bear her being called a mudblood? You really are a fool!"

"I didn´t send her, Severus", there was a sharpness in Dumbledore´s voice that warned Snape not to go too far, "She went without informing me beforehand. And she has refused to report on anything that is of no value to the order. She has even refused to tell me how she came near them. I only know that she offered them an information that was… too good to resist. Maybe they realized that they couldn´t afford to send her away after this."

Understanding hit Snape like a bucket of ice water.

"It was you", he said, stunned, "You betrayed me, Miss Granger. You told them that I was a spy."

She nodded to that, not turning her eyes away from the stormy night outside.

"I deemed it necessary", she said quietly, no emotion in her voice, no regret.

"You foolish girl. You stupid little idiot", Snape whispered hopelessly, "They will kill you sooner or later, don´t you realize that?"

"As long as I get to do what is necessary beforehand, that is of no concern to me."

"But don´t you know what they will do to you?", he noticed that he pleaded with her, begging her to look at him, to take his warnings seriously, to get out as long as she still could, "I have been at the revels. I know what they do to the new Death Eater women. Even if they wouldn´t treat you as a mudblood you couldn´t bear it."

"I think she had to bear most of it long before she entered", it was Draco, who had finally found the courage to speak.

One incredibly long, silent moment, Hermione Granger turned away from the window and met Draco´s eyes. She seemed to delve into them, to seek out a hidden truth that lay behind his face. Then she nodded matter of factly and returned her gaze to the window.

"Et tu, Brute", Snape heard her whisper.

"What do you mean, Draco?"

Draco now found Dumbledore´s eyes fixed on him, and a blush rose to his cheeks.

"She seduced my father", he whispered unhappily.

"WHAT?" In one swift movement Severus had reached the girl and dragged her to her feet. She moaned and shrank back from him, trying to free herself.

"Enough, Severus!", Dumbledore thundered, now on his feet, "Let her go immediately!"

"Of all the stupid things! Lucius is a monster, incapable of feeling", he shot an excusing glance at Draco, "How could you allow this, Albus? How could you?"

In the light of the flickering candles, the Headmaster looked old, frail and broken, as he raised his hands in a helpless gesture.

"She didn´t tell me, Severus. I didn´t know…"

"I can assure you all that Lucius is quite in love with me", Hermione informed them acidly, rubbing her arm where Snape had grabbed her, "I´m in perfect control of the situation."

"He admires her deeply", Draco confirmed hesitatingly, "and he talks about her endlessly. He says that he never met a girl so ruthless before, someone who was willing to do things even beyond his imagination, someone who even enjoyed…"

"I do believe they understood you, Draco", Hermione cut him short. She was still refusing to look at them all.

"No, Hermione, I don´t think so", Draco answered, the determination Snape had seen before back in his eyes, "I have disclosed all this for a reason, Headmaster. I don´t believe that Hermione is in control any longer. My father told me terrible things about the revels, he told me about the things she has to do to satisfy Voldemort. I believe that she is wounded badly every time she attends a meeting, and that she isn´t telling anybody about it. Show it to them, Hermione", he demanded once more, "Show them or I will do it."

She rose form her chair and walked over to the window, until her face nearly touched the panes of thick glass.

"I am sorry, Hermione, but I´m doing this for you", he whispered hoarsely.

"Don´t, Draco", she said once more, but he crossed the distance between them, turned her to face the office and opened the cloak she had drawn tightly around her shoulders. She made no move to stop him, but for a second, her masks fell, leaving her face exposed and raw, full of pain und anger, and Severus shivered.

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"Et tu Brute" - You too, Brutus - from Shakespeare´s "Julius Caesar"

A/N: Thank you all once more for your wonderful reviews! I hope this chapter satisfies you all; I know that it is quite an evil cliffie, but the next one´s nearly ready, so watch out for it!


	5. To the Headmaster, Part II

Disclaimer (counting for every chapter): Nothing in this story belongs to me, except the plot. All rights to characters, setting etc. are J.K. Rowling´s and I intend no profit.

To the Headmaster, Part II

Parting Hermione´s already torn shirt, Draco couldn´t suppress a gasp. There was so much blood, sticking her skin and her shirt together, wetting the cloak that had hidden the blood before. It was trickling from a deep wound in her side. Severus looked over to Dumbledore and found an expression in his face that he had only once before encountered in the old wizard – on a night as dark and rainy as this, when the young Severus Snape had turned to his Professor for help.

"My child", Dumbledore whispered, barely audible, and finally left his place behind the ancient desk. A muttered spell and the deep wound closed, blood and dirt vanishing.

"What have you done to yourself?"

Hermione had closed her eyes. A soft sigh escaped her lips, then she stood even taller and her face relaxed slightly. Severus felt a strange sort of admiration awakening in himself, although he immediately suppressed it again.

She had been in pain, the whole time, and yet she had fought him every single step of the way, holding herself like a queen and never for even a moment losing her perfect self control. Dumbledore had been right – there _was _ more to her than met the eyes. But still, she was a child, and under his protection. He had duties to her, however brilliant and daring she might be.

"You can´t go back there", he took it up like the chorus of an old song, "This proves how dangerous it is!"

"But I have to!", she retorted angrily, "My information is by far too valuable to sacrifice it to my personal needs. Wounds can be taken care of. But we need everything we can get to win against Voldemort. We can´t allow ourselves to be picky where to get it!"

"Nothing you found out could be important enough to justify this!"

"It didn´t stop you from doing exactly what I do now for over two years, Professor", it wasn´t an argument, it was the stating of a fact, "And I have already found out more than you ever did."

"Albus", feeling helpless against her wall of determination and stubbornness, he turned to the old wizard for support, "End this madness. Please."

But Albus Dumbledore, looking every single one of his hundred and fifty years, shook his head.

"I´m afraid I can´t do this, my dear boy. For she is entirely right. She has been a member for only three months and already she has given us some invaluable insider knowledge. We can´t afford to loose her."

Severus felt his shoulders sinking. He searched the face of his old teacher and found only determination, sad, but as hard as steel.

"Then you sentence her to death", he stated.

"Voldemort will sentence us all to death, Severus. She is doing what she can to prevent it from happening. As we all do what we can."

Silence followed. There was nothing left to say, and the finality in Dumbledore´s voice told Severus that all further argumentation would be fruitless.

"Now then", the sound of Hermione´s voice surprised all of them, crisp and clear like a winter morning, with a slightly mocking undertone, "if we all have had enough melodrama for one evening, I would prefer to leave. I need some rest."

She had already reached the door of the office when Snape´s hand stopped her.

"Not so fast, Miss Granger", he said, nearly back to his silky sarcasm, but only nearly, "There is still something you haven´t found necessary to tell us, I think."

"I have told you everything that could be of consequence to you."

"Certainly not. Would you mind showing me your hands, Miss Granger? Or, more precisely, your finger nails?"

She paled at that, suddenly searching his face like a trapped cat would search that of her hunter.

"I can´t imagine why that should be necessary. I wish to go now."

"Lumos", Snape thundered, and, before she could sneak around him, grabbed her hands. The all too bright light that suddenly filled the office made Dumbledore, Draco and Hermione flinch, but Severus had concentrated on her hands, and he found prove for his assumption.

"Now I need a closer look at your eyes", he murmured, forcefully turning her head towards him as she refused to yield.

"As I thought."

He let her go and she stumbled back some steps, her eyes never leaving the dark figure of her Potions Master that now turned to Dumbledore, his face even graver than before.

"This is worse than I had assumed before, Headmaster. I had wondered how she would manage to spend so many a night at the revels, nurture her wounds, conspire with her little lap dog over there", he waved his hand at Draco, who blushed angrily, "and still deliver perfect and lengthy essays on time. Her body gave me the answer just now, I´m afraid."

He paused, collecting his thoughts for a moment.

"In order to keep going, Miss Granger has been taking an extremely strong stimulant, at least for a month, but if I judge her correctly, she has been doing it for much longer."

He turned to her now, matching her look.

"I believe it is the Thanalos potion you are using, Miss Granger?"

For one moment, she withstood his gaze, but then she lowered her head, nodding slowly.

"Yes."

"But isn´t that highly addictive?", Malfoy asked, his face betraying the shock.

"It is. And furthermore, it is extremely dangerous. Thanlaos draws on the magical and physical energy of the person who uses it. But once this energy is spend, the addicted will die. There can be no other outcome if the stimulant is taken over a certain period of time. How long have you been taking it, Miss Granger?"

"Three and a half months", she answered quietly.

"Which is by far too long. You can consider yourself lucky not to have died on the spot some weeks ago. I can´t believe it, girl", he was tempted to grab her by the shoulders and shake some sense into her, "You have always seemed to possess at least a minor intellect. How can you be so unbelievingly stupid."

"It is under control", she answered, face and voice like steel.

"There are quite a lot of things you believe to control, Miss Granger", Severus sneered, gaining the upper hand again, at last, "We should examine your logical powers for damage, too."

"This isn´t necessary, Severus", the Headmaster finally admonished him, "What do you think would be the wisest course of action now?"

"You mean apart from putting her into a cell and throwing the key away?", he spit out, but the pleading look in Dumbledore´s eyes calmed him down.

"She needs a withdrawal therapy. The symptoms will be pretty bad, but if she goes on like this, she won´t make it into the next month."

"How long will it take?", the Headmaster searched Snape´s face thoughtfully.

"Two weeks, perhaps three. She will have to be under close surveillance, someone with enough medical experience to administer the right potions. She certainly won´t be able to attend any Death Eater meetings at the time, and she should also be isolated from the other students of this school."

"Impossible", Hermione cut in angrily, "I´m in the middle of gaining Voldemort´s trust, I need only a month or two to get him where I want him to be. I can´t stop attending now! Our plan would fail, Headmaster! All will have been in vain!"

"You won´t survive another month, Miss Granger! Stop being so stubborn and for once accept that you are a human being too!"

"And that coming from you, Professor Snape! Quite the joke of the year! I…"

"I have to agree to Severus, Miss Granger", Dumbldore had sat down behind his desk once more, drinking from a cup that had appeared beside his left elbow, "Although I am fully aware of the importance of your mission, your health is even more important."

Severus snorted at that, but the Headmaster ignored him calmly.

"You will therefore go into hiding as long as it takes for you to recover from the abuse of that potion. This is my last word."

Noticing how she opened her mouth to argue anyway, he continued, "And it is no use to threaten me with your quitting. Of age or not, your addiction disables you to decide for yourself at the moment. Thus it is my duty as your Headmaster to make that decision for you. Every solicitor of the wizard and the muggle world will tell you that."

His gaze met hers, and after a moment, she nodded her acceptance.

"All right", she conceded, "But let us make it worthwhile then. You will tell Harry, Ron and the rest of the school that there was an attack on my parents, causing them to go into hiding, and that I have decided to accompany them as long as the shock wears off. But Draco here will tell his father that he accompanied me on a midnight mission. We have tried to breach the wards of Hogwarts, Draco, and while you were able to flee, I was hit by a defensive spell that knocked me out. You stayed near and could overlisten a talk between Dumbledore and McGonagall, who believe that there was a Death Eater attack on the school which I tried to fight back. As long as I remain unconscious, they are going to hide me away to protect me from danger. This will explain my absence to the students, while at the same time strengthen my position to Voldemort."

There it was. A perfect little cover story, spun out in a breath, while the girl was still recovering from the shock of exposure. Severus couldn´t help but gape at her for a moment. She certainly was excellent spy material.

"It sounds brilliant to me, Miss Granger", Dumbledore agreed, pride shining from his eyes for a moment.

"Now then, Miss Granger. Severus will take you to his quarters, where he will begin with the preparations as soon as possible, while Draco and I…"

"WHAT? Why me?"

"Who did you think it would be, Severus?", Dumbledore asked back, clearly amused by his shock. _How happy I am to entertain you, Albus_, he thought infuriated.

"You are the logical choice. You know everything about the potion, the withdrawal symptoms and the counter potions, and you have the necessary medical knowledge. Not to forget that you already know about her position, while Madame Pomfrey doesn´t and must never know about it. As much as I like Poppy, she´s a terrible gossip. The whole school would know about it in a day´s time."

"But I have duties, Headmaster, I can´t simply…"

"Now now, Severus", was that a grin hidden beneath his beard?, "If Miss Granger is willing to accept the extremely painful treatment we will put her under, surely you won´t deny her the assistance she needs? After all, it is a teacher´s duty to help his students."

_Bloody bastard. He´s got me there._

Nodding stiffly, he turned to Hermione, gesturing for her to stand up and accompany him.

"Very well. It is best to return to my chambers now, Miss Granger, while everyone else is still asleep."

She rose from her chair, facing him with a calm face and steady eyes.

"Yes. But before we go, I have a question to ask. Why were you able to detect the Thanalos potion, Professor?"

The question surprised him, but somehow he didn´t consider a lie.

"I have used it myself… during certain times."

To that, the sides of her mouth curled upwards for a bitter smile. "I thought so", she replied.

And Draco, watching their competing profiles in the warm glow of the candle light, couldn´t help but notice how very much alike they had become, two opponents, equal in strength and willpower, one at the beginning, the other at the end of the same, very long way, but both with eyes that had seen far too much.

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A/N: Here we go again! Thanks for all your reviews, it´s like a little christmas every day!

Many of you have asked for a little more insight into the characters and their reasons for acting the way they do. Therefore, next chapter will see a little less action and more interaction instead. As the story settles down a bit, I will, too, as I still have all my Christmas shopping to do smirk. But if you review and review and review... who knows? (Hint, hint!)


	6. Settling Down

Settling Down

Silently, Hermione followed Severus down the dark and still deserted corridors of Hogwarts. Even the stairs seemed to have settled down for the night. When they passed the turning that led to Gryffindor tower, she stopped, causing him to turn around, an angry reprimand on his lips.

"If I have to spend the next weeks in your quarters, I will need some of my things", she remarked.

"Let the house elves get it for you", he growled at her.

Severus had expected her to argue with him, but she simply nodded and fell in behind him once again. He was relieved that she remained quiet, relieved that she didn´t fight him any longer.

He felt so drained. Nothing was left of the energy he had felt in the morning, nothing of the happiness and contentment that had filled him. He knew now what the price for his freedom had been. The life of a student. The future of the brightest mind he had taught during his time at Hogwarts. The innocence of a girl.

And innocent she was no longer. She possessed the cunning and ruthlessness of a master spy, the will to sacrifice everything if it stood in her way. Hiding her works in the shadows, using Draco and Dumbledore and even himself like a puppet master used his creations.

She was very much like the Death Eaters in this respect, sharing their will to utilize anything to achieve her goal. Very much alike to him, or rather to the younger Snape of another time.

But while he could understand the followers of Voldemort in their ambition, ideals and arrogance, while he could finally understand himself in his blind search for power and knowledge, he couldn´t understand Hermione Granger.

What was driving her? What was causing her to destroy her own life, and be so bloody calm about it, as if giving up her body and soul to the devil was nothing more than losing a game of Wizard´s Chess?

He would have to find out, he decided as they descended down into the dungeons, but not tonight.

He entered the Potions classroom, and, with Hermione still trailing obediently behind him, made over to the door that led to his office and the adjoining chambers.

"Black blood", he whispered, felt the wards lowering an watched her out of the corner of his eyes. To his irritation, she looked more amused than anything.

He had designed his melodramatic passwords especially to shock his overcurious students, their annoying parents and the duller members of the staff. Students shuddered because of them, and they had nurtured the rumours of his vampiric nature he had carefully constructed over the years.

But she just cocked an eyebrow and smiled knowingly. Insufferable girl!

The door swung open and he led her through his cold, dark and barren office into chambers that didn´t look much friendlier. Massive bookcases filled with dusty and shabby volumes stood along the windowless walls, the bare floor of stones and the unlit fireplace only enhancing the natural chill of the dungeons. The only place to sit in his living room was an old sofa, upholstered with some shabby black cloth that looked very much like the fur of a dog. On a pedestal by the opposite wall stood a single, white gleaming skull, illuminated by two black candles.

Not even wasting a look around, Hermione sat down on the sofa and tidied her robes around her.

"Where should I stay", she asked neutrally. "Surely you have a bedroom somewhere here?"

She hadn´t even looked around! Wasn´t there anything that impressed this chit of a girl? Even Minerva had been dumbstruck when she had entered his rooms first, and only a very fast explanation had kept her from fleeing his presence immediately.

But Hermione probably didn´t expect anything else from her Potions Master. The thought angered him, and _that_ angered him even more.

"We are not staying here, Miss Granger", he snapped back, "so you can stop flouncing yourself on my furniture and asking stupid questions."

This surprised her. She rose again and examined the three doors that were situated on the far end side of the room. But instead of opening one of them, Severus moved over to the only piece of furniture that held at least a trace of beauty and comfort – a grubby tapestry set in dark colours that depicted the entrance of an ancient building, possibly a temple, with huge pillars rising on the left and right side of an intricately carved door.

Severus scowled at the look of utter confusion in Hermione´s eyes.

"Charming as it is that you believe I would live in rooms of such a depressing shabbiness, you should think more of me than that I would spend my time in rooms so minimally protected. The location of my real chambers is one of the best kept secrets in this castle, only Albus, Minerva and Remus Lupin know about it, and only Lupin is able to enter without my direct permission. Knowing the password won´t help you, as the magic is tied to my eye and hand. I do believe the muggles use a similar technique to protect their most valuable possessions. In fact, my wards are based on the muggle concept, and I do not know of any other wizard using it. In a nutshell, Miss Granger: There will be no possibility for you to leave my rooms without my direct permission."

He turned towards the tapestry, placed both his palms on the pillars and fixed his eyes on a spot completely undistinguishable from the rest of the tapestry.

"The nymphs have departed", he whispered, and the sudden intake of breath besides him told him that Miss Granger understood the allusion. He had never imagined her to be a reader of poetry.

The entry door of the temple suddenly started to glow. Its silhouette flowed out of the dark, gaining structure and realness, until the rest of the tapestry seemed to be nothing more than a decoration around a real door.

Severus reached out and turned the handle. With a mocking smile that nevertheless seemed to entail a hint of pride, he motioned her to step through.

"This, Miss Granger, is where I really live."

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For one moment, warm light embraced Hermione, then she stepped through the door into a room that made her cry out in surprise.

This, she decided in a heartbeat, was Paradise.

Never had she seen so many beautiful books in one place, never a room so comfortable while perfectly organized. Bookshelves covered every inch of wall, reaching up to the high ceiling an down to the floor that was hidden by carpets so thick and soft that she was tempted to shrug of her shoes and wriggle her toes into them. In front of a large window Snape had placed a huge desk of rose wood that was overflowing with articles, letters and half unrolled parchments. Couches and high backed armchairs were inviting her to curl up and spend hours and hours with reading, researching, and forgetting the world outside.

Hermione felt her shoulders lower, her back losing some of its rigid straightness. For the first time since Snape had confronted her and Draco, perhaps for the first time since she had started all this, she felt relaxed. This was a place where she would be safe. Thick walls and strong wards to keep the outer evil away, and enough to learn to silence the dark within her.

She had always known that, somewhere deep inside, Professor Snape had to be a hedonist. All book lovers were. But it frightened her a bit that he lived in the chambers of her dreams, that, if only she had enough money, she would choose her rooms to look very much like those of Severus Snape. Somehow, it made perfect sense.

"My library", his silky voice commented coolly, but she could sense his uneasiness. He probably didn´t allow many people to come here, least of all students.

"It is beautiful", she whispered, still enchanted by the warm colours, the glow of candles on the leather spines and the smell of old books that surrounded her, "And it fits you perfectly."

Her words had surprised him, and she could feel his irritation grow beside her.

"I don´t consider you competent to judge this, Miss Granger. Nor do I wish to be analysed by you."

_It must feel like an invasion_, she suddenly realized, _me staying here, me of all students. The insufferable know-it-all in his private chambers_.

"I appreciate your help very much, Professor", she answered softly, "and I promise that I will not abuse your trust."

"This is hardly about trust, Miss Granger", Snape said icily, "The Headmaster ordered me to this task, and I will obey his wish. No need for Gryffindor sentimentality. I hope you won´t start sobbing or whimpering or whatever girls your age are normally doing."

This brought her back to reality. She had for a second forgotten that the man she was facing was not Severus Snape, brilliant scientist and avid reader, but Professor Snape, sarcastic bastard.

His masks were firmly in place, and he was loathing her presence more and more every minute. He was not her friend, and she wasn´t safe here. She would need every ounce of strength and will to survive this, hopefully without showing too much of what needed to remain secret.

"I certainly won´t, Professor", Her masks, too, slid firmly into place, and she concentrated on the task at hand, "If you would show me my room now."

He had sensed the cracks in her defences a moment too late. Only when she had pulled back again, every trace of emotion leaving her face, had he realized that for a moment she would have been open to him.

_Bloody fool_, he cursed himself_, I could have gotten her there. _

"You are free to borrow every book you´d like to read", he offered, hoping to rekindle her interest, but it was too late.

His sudden kindness surprised her, but she was well beyond the stage where books could tempt her away from her task.

"Thank you", she declined, "but I have enough school work to do as it is."

He waited, but that was all she would say now. Suddenly, tiredness swept over her like a wave and left her weak and depressed. She wanted nothing but a hot shower and a warm bed to forget the horrors that awaited her in the next weeks.

Despite what Snape seemed to think, she hadn´t used the Thanalos Potion lightly. She had researched it profoundly and knew well enough what a withdrawal therapy meant at this stage. Fever, blood and madness probably. If she was lucky. If she was not, it could kill her.

And she couldn´t do this on her own any longer. This, she had realized when Snape _and_ Draco had been able to take her by surprise. She had become careless, and the resulting mistakes could kill her sooner than she would risk.

She needed to end this, needed it desperately. Just a few more months, and all would be over, Voldemort defeated, and Harry, Draco and all the others free again to live their lives as they deserved it.

A memory flashed before her inner eye, the silhouette of a man, crouching on the floor in darkness, a frightened face, white from the blood loss, and a voice, shaking with fear…

Her silence unnerved Snape, she realized suddenly, but he waited for her to speak again.

"My room?", she asked once more, not caring that she sounded rather rude.

"This way", he led her over to a winding staircase that was situated in one corner of the room.

While they ascended to the next level, he explained the design of his chambers: "As you have seen, my library is on the ground floor. On the next level you will find my private rooms and the guest room, which you will inhabit while this situation is lasting. On the second level are my laboratory and my private study. You will not enter that level. The library and your guest and bath room are open to you, but I will not risk valuable potions or ingredients for the fun of a little girl."

Was he being nasty on purpose, or had year long habits of student-bickering just taken over? She honestly didn´t care, her relief far overriding any irritation when he showed her the room she would spend her next weeks in, asked politely if she needed anything else and then left her.

She fell asleep as soon as her head hit the pillows, too tired even to be haunted by the nightmares that were her usual companions.

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"I wonder what´s gotten into Ferret boy", Ron whispered curiously.

Breakfast had been a quiet, subdued affair this morning, and Ron seemed wild for anything that could distract him from the news about Hermione´s parents.

McGonagall had found them waiting for their friend in the Gryffindor common room this morning, and, after leading them into her private study, had explained about the attack and the need for Mr. and Mrs Granger to go into hiding.

Of course, Ron and Harry could understand that Hermione had chosen to accompany them for a while, although Ron couldn´t resist to comment on how shocked he was that Hermione was taking her school work so lightly.

But they were slightly disappointed that Hermione hadn´t even taken the time to tell them herself. Not that they would have dreamed of remarking this in front of McGonagall…

"What about him?", Harry asked without any real interest. Hermione had been strange during the last months. Her fears for her parents might explain her behaviour, but Harry couldn´t understand why she wouldn´t talk about it to him, of all people. He knew what it was like to lose your parents, to fear for the loved ones around you because you endangered them. What had distanced her so much?

"He looks as if he´d rather kill his porridge than eat it. Really, it´s not that bad, is it? Guess he misses his Daddy´s house elves flocking around him, eh?"

Harry raised his head and looked over to the Slytherin table. Ron was right, instead of joking around with his idiot friends, Draco was staring into his porridge as if he couldn´t decide whether to kill it or to cry it wet.

He hadn´t given Draco much thought over the last year. The fight in the Ministry and the following arrest of many of the high ranking Death Eaters had silenced the Slytherins. Of course, Malfoy, Crabbe, Goyle and many of the others had vanished mysteriously from Azkaban only three weeks later, but although Dumbledore believed that Fudge didn´t search for Malfoy all too diligently, all ties to the Ministry were cut officially.

With no influential Daddy around that could get him out of any tight spot, Draco had sobered up fast enough. Now that Harry thought of it – he hadn´t seen him together with his side kicks Crabbe and Goyle for a long time. And there hadn´t been any attacks or insults that he could remember over the last months.

_We have changed_, Harry thought, _not only me or Hermione, but Draco, too. War is drawing nearer, and we don´t know who will win. Hell, we don´t even know if we´ll live to see the next year._

But of course, while Harry and the Order were fighting for freedom and justice, Draco would soon be joining his father at the Death Eater revels.

"Probably imagining how he will kill his first mudblood", Harry whispered back, only to kill off the last bits of conversation near him. They sank back into moody silence.

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Draco didn´t listen to the animated conversation about Quidditch around him. He hadn´t slept well last night, in fact, he hadn´t slept at all. Every time he had closed his eyes, Hermione´s face had pushed forward in his mind, her eyes, so dark against the whiteness of her skin, and full of reproach.

He had done it for her, but nevertheless, he had betrayed her, and he knew that he would never forget that hurt look of hers, her whispered words: "Et tu, Brute".

He had failed her. He should have found another way, should at least have kept Snape out of it.

And now she was locked inside the dungeons with this dark, brooding old man, locked up to experience the madness of withdrawal.

And it was all his fault.

He sighed and closed his eyes, not caring for the looks that pierced his back. His own Slytherins had long ago stopped noticing his strange behaviour. They believed that it was his father´s capture that had changed him so.

And in a way, that was true.

He remembered it now, all too clearly, the night when they had returned. Dumbledore, Fudge, the unconscious Gryffindors and that brat Potter, strutting around as if he owned the place. He had heard rumours that Potter had vandalized Dumbledore´s office later that night, and had felt gleeful. But of course, being Potter, no consequences awaited the stupid scar head.

Then, Fudge had met him in an office, he couldn´t remember which it had been, and had told him all about the fight, his father´s "loyalty with the wrong side", as Fudge called it, and his capture.

It had been the talk of the school. They had whispered behind his back, their voices full of venom and malice.

"Who´s laughing now, Malfoy?"

"Why, your Dad can´t order us around anymore, can he?"

Ronald Weasley had been the worst of all, Potter being too depressed with the death of his pitiable outlawed Godfather. He had paid him back, every single sly remark and insult.

Draco had never felt so helpless before. Vulnerable. Ordinary. Betrayed.

He had left the school as often as possible, searching refuge near the great lake, where he used to sit by an old elm tree, watching the water for hours and wondering what had happened with the life he had been so proud of only weeks before.

And that was the place where she had found him, four days after the Ministry fight. She had just left the infirmary that day, and her injuries were not yet fully healed.

He hadn´t seen her come, or otherwise he would have left. He had enough people taunting him already without Hermione Granger joining their ranks.

But she had crept up on him, and he had jumped visibly when she called his name, a further indignity which made him cringe inside.

"Draco?"

"What do you want, Granger? Come to get your revenge before nothing´s left?"

To his surprise, she had sat down beside him, leaned her back against the ancient tree and silently watched the water for a while.

"I only came to say that I´m sorry, Draco", she finally said.

He had been dumbstruck that night. This had to be a joke! His father had tried to kill her, he had insulted her in every possible way, and she came to say she was sorry?

"Sorry", he had answered shortly, "Not funny at all. Do what you came to do, and then get back to your mudblood-loving friends."

She hadn´t even reacted to his choice of words.

"I know that you lost as much as Harry during that night in the Ministry, Draco. And you are probably thinking that nobody cares about it. But I do."

"You are not talking to Potter here, Granger", he snarled, and the bitterness in his own voice frightened him, "I am one of the bad guys."

"You´re not!", she sounded angry with him, "What your father did or didn´t do is not your fault. You have behaved like you were taught to, and that isn´t your fault either."

"Never considered that this is what I want to be? I have decided long ago which side should be mine, and my father has nothing to do with it! Potter knows this. I have no need for a Gryffindor hand in peace."

Hermione sighed and met his defiant eyes. Her gaze pierced him, breaking through all defences until his fear and hurt lay naked before her. Strangely enough, it was not a bad feeling. In a way, it was a relief to know that there was at least one in this school whom he couldn´t fool.

"Oh, but you do, Draco", she sighed, "What Harry never understood is that we all must play our parts. You can´t change your role any more than the Boy Who Lived, Snape, Dumbledore, or me", the last part was almost a whisper, "But although we may have no choice about the masks we are forced to wear, we can decide what we do with it. You don´t have to become what everybody thinks of you, Draco. You don´t have to follow in your father´s footsteps, even if they are all expecting it from you. Masks are something to be used, not to be used by."

She stood up again, her hand resting for the fraction of a second on his shoulder. Her hand was warm, and feather light.

"And you can choose to grant people a glimpse behind your mask, at the true Draco. Not many perhaps, as not all are willing or able to see, but some, and sometimes. I haven´t come to reform you, Draco, that´s why I leave now. But if you need someone to help you take your mask off for a while, or just someone to talk, I´d feel proud if you came to me. Good night."

And before he could answer, before he could even realize what she had offered him, she had vanished into the growing darkness of the night. She certainly hadn´t heard his whispered "thank you", but something told him that she knew about it anyway.

Draco remembered the time, and started eating his porridge that had turned by now cold and disgusting.

It had taken him days to gather the necessary courage, but finally, he had searched her out in the library, fearing every step of the way that she had made fun of him, or had regretted her offer as soon as she had made it, but her eyes hat lit up when she saw him advancing.

She had shown him to a room she called "The Room of Requirement", from which he and some other Slytherins had chased "Dumbledore´s Army" in their fifth year. Comfortable couches and warm tea awaited them, and they talked for hours.

Again, her face rose inside his mind, her pleading eyes, set within a stony countenance. She was his only real friend, and he had failed her miserably.

In moments like these, Draco was grateful for the strict education in manners and discipline his father had put him under. Had it not been for the famous self-control of the Malfoys, Draco would have laid his head onto the polished table and cried his heart out.

Instead, he mutely gathered his things and strode of to the first lesson of the day.

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A/N: I know it´s been a while piling shame on my shoulders, but you know... family, Christmas, catastrophies...

Anyway, thank you all for your wonderful reviews!

Disclaimer: Nope. Doesn´t belong to me. Pity.


	7. The Heart of Darkness, Part I

The Heart of Darkness, Part I

When she awoke, for one single, blessed moment she didn´t know who she was nor where she was. She only felt the warmth, the sweet herbal smell of her pillow. Nothing hurt, nothing was wrong. She could just lie there without a care in the world.

Then, she opened her eyes and remembered. She was Hermione Granger, Head Girl and star pupil, friend to the Boy Who Lived, unofficial member of the Order of the Phoenix. She was Hermione Granger, muggleborn Death Eater, lover to Lucius Malfoy, plaything to the Dark Lord, traitor and spy. Hermione Granger, Potion-addicted madwoman that headed towards certain doom.

Sometimes, she felt like breaking into pieces, as if all the different masks she wore and roles she played would split away from her and develop a life of their own, until nothing would be left of her but a little girl, hiding in a corner, sobbing and helpless.

But she would die before that happened.

She sat up and took in her surroundings. The house elves had lit the intricately carved fireplace, and her books and parchments were carefully arranged on the small desk that stood by the window on her right hand side.

It was a beautiful room, quite big for someone who was so unused to guests as Professor Snape, held in the same colours as the library downstairs and equipped with everything she could wish for. In fact, it looked very much like her Head Girl room, with the same large, canopied bed, a similar wardrobe and bookshelf, only that it hadn´t been used by hundreds of Head Girls before her and therefore lacked the slightly shabby quality of her home.

She left the bed and opened the door to her personal little bathroom. The similarities to the Head Girl´s room ended here, as the guest bathroom of Snape´s chambers contained every possible luxury and comfort any adult wizard could wish for. This certainly wasn´t considered necessary to an adolescent student, and she heartily agreed to this opinion. She didn´t even know what to use all these perfumes, salves, creams and lotions for!

Luckily, the house elves had also brought her cosmetics. She decided for a hot bath instead of a shower and took her time, something she had started consider as a luxury. Time… there was so little left of it, and it was when she considered all the years to come that she had already lost that she regretted her decisions of the last few months. But only for a moment.

It was already after 12 a.m., and she felt ravenous. She decided to leave her room in search of something to eat. To her surprise, a carefully set table was awaiting her in the library, along with a black clad, black mooded Potions Professor who was marking essays at his desk.

"I had the house elves bring something for us", he remarked, "I suppose you are hungry?"

"Yes, thank you."

She sat down and surveyed a meal that couldn´t be classified as something. It much more looked like everything to her. Some house elf had to love him very much indeed!

She had chosen eggs and toast when the chair opposite to her was drawn back and she suddenly faced a sitting Severus Snape who reached for the fruit bowl. Some of her astonishment must have shown on her face, for he cocked an eyebrow and nearly smiled at her.

Some months ago, that alone would have been enough to shock her till next Wednesday, but not now anymore, now that she knew…

"Even people like me eat from time to time, Miss Granger."

"I am not surprised by it, Professor."_ Rather by your politeness. Very untypical behaviour for you._

The first half of the meal was spent in silence, Hermione nurturing her new found appetite, and Snape carefully examining her out of the corner of his eye.

"I trust you have slept much better than during the last months, Miss Granger?"

"True", she answered, surprised again, "How do you know?"

"You haven´t taken the Potion last night. The results are clearly visible. You look rested and more relaxed, have a better appetite and are not as aggressive as yesterday."

"Well thank you very much", she answered sarcastically, angry that he had brought up the potion so soon. He could have let her enjoy her breakfast, at least.

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Severus´ day had been terrible so far, and he knew it wouldn´t get any better. When he had awoken after what seemed like only minutes of sleep, he had been badly tempted to storm into her room, awaken her and give her a taste of the foul mood she had caused.

But as this was likely her last peaceful night of sleep for weeks, he withstood the temptation and settled for strong tea instead.

The classes of the morning had been hell, too. Idiotic first years who ruined the most basic potions, and even his seventh year class, normally a good example for what he really enjoyed about teaching, had been reduced to utter mediocrity by the physical absence of Miss Granger and the mental one of Draco, Potter and Weasley, who were all worrying about their friend, though in quite different ways.

And now, he had to breakfast with said friend, who glared at him defiantly from the other side of the table. A pleasure!

He knew that his remark hadn´t been exactly sensitive, but there were more important things that Hermione Granger´s feelings at the moment. The fate of his world, for example. And the outcome of this war.

"Are you feeling any symptoms of the withdrawal yet?"

She shook her head, and before he could explain said symptoms to her, she started to count them off on her fingers.

"No nervousness yet, Professor, no shivering, sweating or fever. I know exactly what awaits me, it is not necessary to explain it to me. I will start to feel bad very soon. I will develop strong physical reactions until I will be too ill to move, talk, or sustain myself. Then it will get worse. I will hallucinate, experience attacks of extreme aggressiveness and panic. I will do anything for a further dose of the potion. But the most dangerous thing to me will be magic, as the Thanalos Potion reacts to it and draws strength from it. Therefore, I must not use it, nor have it used on me, whatever be the reason. It would surely kill me, but I might die without it nevertheless. That should about cover it."

"Indeed", he answered, shocked again by her perfect calm. But her eyes betrayed her this time. She was afraid, to the point of collapsing. Only her will kept her going, and suddenly he understood that she had to remain so cool, so absolutely controlled. One slip, one emotion too much, and she would break.

He could remember what it was like to live this way, could remember all the times he had refused friendliness and comfort out of the fear that he would crack up. Once lost, such a perfect control could never be established again, and it would not do to show people how much it cost you.

Yes, he understood her, and for a heartbeat, her braveness took his breath away. He reached out and touched her hand, just for a moment, but her eyes widened in shock.

"I assure you, Miss Granger", he replied as calmly as she, "That I will not let you die. I know enough about this potion and about the treatment of its symptoms, and I promise that no harm will come to you. You can believe me in this."

"Thank you, Professor", it was hard for her to say it, "I… I trust you."

Embarrassed silence. Severus didn´t know whether to take this as a compliment or as a threat. After all, the only people who had ever really trusted him were Voldemort and Dumbledore. And he didn´t know yet to which category he could sort Miss Granger.

After a moment, he cleared his throat and returned to the safer soil of technicalities.

"Very well. But before we can concentrate on the therapy, there are a few things important to consider. First of all: You should inform your parents that you can´t be reached via owl post over next weeks, and that they must not answer to Harry´s or Ron´s letters. We can´t risk them storming into Hogwarts and questioning the Headmaster."

"That won´t be necessary, Professor", clearly, Hermione felt better when on safe ground, too, "I have already found a safe place for my parents. In fact, they went into hiding six months ago. I haven´t tried to reach them since then, and they know better than to try reaching me."

"You sent them into hiding?", Snape asked himself when the series of shocks this girl had caused would finally end, "Six months ago?"

She simply nodded.

"I foresaw this development and considered it wise not to leave my parents out in the open as a means for putting pressure on me. The actions of the Death Eaters have confirmed my caution. Is there anything else we have to discuss?"

"But how could you know six months ago?"

"You didn´t think I made this decision out of the spur of one moment, did you? I planned carefully, and my parents were one insecure factor that had to be removed."

There it was again: the icy coldness, void of any human feeling. And he simply couldn´t make out whether it was just a brilliant act or real.

"There is just one more thing", he began slowly, "A question I need an answer to."

"Yes"

"Why did you do it?"

"What?", she asked back.

"Join the Death Eaters, betray me. Risk your life. Why?"

"To help the war effort", she replied smoothly.

He snorted, "You are much too intelligent for such an idealistic nonsense, Miss Granger.

She raised her left eyebrow and looked at him in mock surprise, "Why, was that a compliment, Professor? This does flatter me."

"Stop fooling around, girl", he growled, "I have to know the reason for this whole pitiful enterprise!"

"You will never know my reasons, Professor", she replied with finality, "For they are entirely my own. You will have to trust me, or rather Dumbledore, which will be easier for you I think."

She really thought she could treat him like that? Bloody hell, he wasn´t one of her idiotic Gryffindor friends!"

"Inacceptable", he answered, his voice as final as hers, "I give you one last chance to answer me. I you refuse, I will find other ways."

"Such like what? Perform the Cruciatus on me? Dumbledore wouldn´t be happy to have his former spy torturing his recent one. Besides, it wouldn´t work. I don´t crack that easily, Professor."

He knew that it was wrong. He had sworn himself never to do it again, never again to enter a person´s mind without their permission. She was a student, and he was responsible for her!

But this was more important than his own beliefs or his bad conscience. The future of his world, the outcome of this war rested on Hermione Grangers shoulders, and he had to know why she had taken on this burden. He had to be sure that she wouldn´t throw it away when it became to heavy for her.

That was why he had to do it. Her voice echoed in his mind, mocking him: _For the war effort_.

One step closed the distance between them. Severus didn´t give himself time to rethink his decision, he grabbed her face and forced it upwards, forced her eyes to meet with his, and delved into her mind.

There was virtually no barrier, no defence of any sort. _With this kind of protection, she´s as good as dead_, he thought grimly, but then the images stormed in on him, and he stopped thinking altogether.

_A stunning looking Hermione in a black evening dress made only to present her breasts in a better light. Men turning to watch her go, women eyeing her jealously. Draco Malfoy at her side. _

_Hermione holding a glass of dark red wine, sipping from it, her eyes glowing under the black night of her lashes. Suddenly, Lucius Malfoy standing before her. _

"_Well well, what does a little mudblood on a ball like this?"_

"_Waiting for you, Mr. Malfoy", wetting her lips with the dark wine and leaning slightly towards him._

"_What should I want with a girl like you?"_

"_There are many uses for a mudblood, Lucius, and many of them can be enjoyable for both sides."_

_Lucius smiling, and a feeling of… lust surging through her groins. He lead her to a chamber and she couldn´t await his hands on her body. _

_Her groaning, as he ripped open the top of her dress…_

_Hermione kneeling in front of Voldemort, her forehead touching the ground._

"_I know that I am but a low muggleborn, Mylord, but even someone like me can be of service to a great one. I know things valuable for you, I am the best friend of Potter and gaining Dumbledore´s trust. I only wish to serve."_

_Rising to the dark Lord´s beckoning and feeling power, triumph and gratitude. She had joined his rank. She was a Death Eater. She was serving the mightiest on earth. _

_Hermione standing before Voldemort. "He is a dirty traitor, Mylord, nothing more. He has betrayed you to the old fool ever since you returned!" Gleeful pride inside her. She had shown the old bat his place. She was a pet to the master, queen of the world that was to come._

"_I can give you Potter, Master. It needs only a little time and a plan, and I will hand the little brat over to you", and the mighty claws of the Dark Lord would smash him, and she would watch._

_Hermione kneeling once more. "Undress", the Dark Lord ordered her, and she obeyed, shrugging of her robes and standing in white nakedness before the inner circle of the Death Eaters._

"_Everything for you, Master". She believed it. She would serve until her death. _

_The dark shapes of Death Eaters closing in on her, hitting and kicking her. Whipping her. _

"_This is what a mudblood gets if she wants to enter our circle."_

_Hermione screaming in pleasure, shivering with lust and begging for more._

"_I thank you for the pain, Mylord! Everything for you, Master!"_

_Hermione, writhing and moaning under the naked body of Lucius Malfoy, bitting and scratching him, drawing blood._

_Hermione crying out as Lucius drove into her, slamming her head against a cold stone wall. _

_Her eyes wide open below the pumping body, her pupils nearly black, filled with lust, triumph, pain, the need for blood…_

_And then the images crowded in on him. Uncountable times he saw her kneeling near the Dark Lord, laughing with him, slicing, hurting and hexing those brought before him._

_He saw her tortured by the Death Eaters of the Inner Circle, and he felt what she felt, felt that she was drawing it all in, bursting and wanting more, saw her taken by all of them and begging for more, and like the mad whirling of a hurricane it consumed him, until he couldn´t distinguish what was his and hers any longer, until he felt the orgiastic pleasures, the exquisite pain and the will to dominate, to prove herself, to show it to them all…And the lust exploded behind his eyes._

He let her go. His own ragged breaths sounded loud in his ears. He heard his heart beating unnaturally fast and loud in his chest. His face was wet with sweat.

Hermione hadn´t moved. When he had broken the connection, her head had slumped down, like a puppet whose strings were torn. Now she lifted it again and met his eyes, calm and unmoving.

He couldn´t bear her eyes locking with his. He had seen what lay behind these eyes. He had entered the darkness.

He didn´t know whether he feared or loathed her, but he backed away from her until he felt the wall behind him.

"So that´s how no harm will come to me, Professor"?, she asked bitterly, "Well, now I know at least what to make of your promises."

"You´re a monster", he whispered.

She didn´t even flinch.

"No fighting for the good side, no war effort, no caring for your friends. Not even ambition. You did it for pure, perverted pleasure, didn´t you? And you got Dumbledore to even cover for your little erotic adventures."

"If you say so."

Hermione turned her back to him and moved over to the winding staircase, slowly, as if there wasn´t a furious Snape towering behind her.

"What did it feel like to be fucked by Malfoy, when people were dying around you, people were tortured, people giving their life up to save their world, what did it feel like? Were you enjoying it?", he shouted, striding over to her and gripping her wrists with all his strength.

"You should know yourself", she could have talked about a Potion in class, so little emotion held her voice, "You felt what I felt, didn´t you?"

"Filthy little whore!", his words whipped the air like a slap in her face.

She cocked her head to that, as if she pondered her expression. For one moment, her eyes clouded, and if Severus had watched closely, he would have seen her hand gripping the rail of the staircase so strongly that the iron drove into her hand. But then, her expression cleared again, and she nodded, as if she had come to a conclusion.

"Yes, Professor. You´re right about that. But it doesn´t change the fact that my work for the order is valuable. Mudblood or whore, I offer a service you can´t do without."

He loosened his grip and drew back his hand. His eyes searched hers and she met his look levelly. There was nothing to say.

"I assume you want me to leave now. I will just get my things, and then…"

"No", he interrupted her, "You are not going to leave. I would rather not set eyes on you ever again, but that´s war for you. And my task doesn´t change. You will stay here until your withdrawal phase is over. But you should know", he advanced on her again, his dark form rising over her like a shadow from a nightmare, "that to me you are more disgusting than any Death Eater could ever be, and that I will watch your every step as long as your spying will continue. If I even suspect something foul, I will kill you with my bare hands."

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A/N:

Mwaaahaaahaa! Promises fun for the next chapters, doesn´t it? Chapter 7 will have withdrawal, hallucinations and nightmares in it, and some things Severus didn´t expect...

I forgot to give you the name of the poem Severus´s password is from: It´s "The Wasteland", by T.S. Eliot, one of the best poems of the last century (at least that´s what I think...). Thanks to vodka-tears for pointing it out!

I´d also like to thank all my reviewers for their great support! You are spoiling me, and that´s why I´m always needing more of it! Review, review, review! If I get ten or more reviews, I will update in the next three days! Otherwise, it will take a bit longer...


	8. Trapped

Trapped 

The moment her door closed behind her, Hermione started trembling all over. She knew that this couldn´t be the first symptoms of withdrawal, not so sudden. It was shock, pure and simple. Slowly, like a frail old woman, she sat down on the bed and tried to regain control over herself.

Funny, that this would affect her so much. She had experienced far worse over the last months, but she simply hadn´t anticipated this. He had invaded her mind, ravaged her thoughts and then judged her with the same cruel efficiency the Dark Lord possessed.

And the look in his eyes, the loathing and the hatred… She shuddered again, curling up into a small ball on the bed, trying to lock out the world. She was dirty, she had seen it in his eyes. Dirty, and inferior to the others, something to be despised and scorned. Gods, she had felt so naked!

Snape´s eyes had mirrored those of the Death Eaters, the same mortification she was exposed to in every single one of the meetings. She should have been prepared. But somehow, it was worse with him. He should have been on her side, he had promised to protect her, and yet, he had judged and found her unworthy.

She didn´t suppress the tears than were running down her face, wondering at the same time if it wasn´t the withdrawal that was turning her nerves upside down. She never cried. She hadn´t done so for half a year, and she had believed herself to be completely dried up inside, like a desert.

After what felt like a long time, she forced herself up in a sitting position. She had to think! She couldn´t let herself collapse like this – it was too dangerous!

While she concentrated on her ability to reason, to think logically even in the midst of chaos, she automatically started to tidy herself, drying her face with the hem of her robe and combing her hair with her fingers.

It was her own fault. She had begun to trust him, hesitatingly, but already too much. She should have foreseen this, and she thanked the Gods that at least her defences had been in place. She couldn´t have born it if he had seen…

_Don´t go there_!, she mentally slapped herself, and obediently her thoughts changed direction, returning to safer grounds. Returning to him. The disbelief in his eyes. He had looked so disappointed of her, and that hurt perhaps most.

Hermione had always admired Snape, his brilliant, proud and independent mind. His acknowledgment and praise, though sparsely given, had always meant more to her that that of any other teacher. She had hoped…

Well, this certainly meant the end of their blossoming relationship. She laughed, a hoarse barking, while she wondered what the hell was so funny. _Great, now I´m getting hysterical!_

At least she had been able to postpone this until she was alone. Breaking down in front of him after what he had seen – that would have been unacceptable. She tried to measure the time she would have to spend with him during the next weeks, and shuddered at the thought.

Not just spending time together, but depending on him, completely helpless and half mad. He had told her what he thought of her, and whatever her state over the next weeks, she could not hope for gentleness, nor pity in him.

It was so humiliating, a voice in her head screamed. Being handed over to a man who despised her. He would be delighted with her downfall, would consider her agonies nothing but a just punishment.

Gods, she was so afraid! But it wouldn´t do to let herself go like that! Determined, she finally forced herself upright again, entered the bathroom and splashed her face with cold water. Better already.

She could feel the panic slowly subsiding, her rational mind returning once more, and she sat down on her bed to think.

She was trapped, so much was clear. There was no way of getting out of this situation without causing even more problems. She couldn´t leave without his permission, and if she found a way to leave his rooms anyway, Dumbledore would withdraw his support. But she couldn´t tell him about Snape´s threat, either, for that would mean informing him about everything. And he wouldn´t understand. He would react exactly the same way.

She didn´t know whether she could take that. And Snape and Dumbledore together might be foolish or misled enough to prevent her further work – "only for your own best, Miss Granger".

Her eyes were roaming the room now, as if searching for a way to escape. Instead, they fell on a creamy white envelope that had been shoved through the opening under her door, probably while she had been in the bathroom.

Hesitatingly, she went over and picked it up. Her hands were shaking. Was he writing her that he had changed his mind? That she should leave immediately?

She tore the envelope open, not caring that she was ripping the soft paper. A galleon dropped into her hand, along with a small sheet of parchment. She frowned, and unfolded the parchment.

"Miss Granger", it read in the precise hand of Snape,

"As I have other duties to attend to than babysitting you, I am not going to return to my chambers until the late evening. Should you start feeling the deserved consequences of your private pleasures, rub the coin, and its counterpart will warm. You may have asked yourself why I haven´t chosen to return your wand. I didn´t consider it wise to give an addicted the ability to cause mischief, but recent developments have confirmed my decision in ways I hadn´t anticipated.

Remain in your room and refrain from causing further difficulties,

Professor S. Snape."

She snorted angrily. Rubbing it in at every possibility, wasn´t he?

Well, she couldn´t prevent his precious time being wasted by her, but she could reduce the contact to a minimum, couldn´t she? She certainly wouldn´t call for him. Dealing with this alone was better than fighting the madness and an aggressive oversized bat at the same time.

Determined, and finally full of energy again, she jumped off the bed and prepared herself as well as she could. She chose blue cotton pyjamas and put them on, plaited her hair carefully and then looked around searchingly. She would need water, she decided. Lots of water and the pain killers her parents used to pack into her luggage. A candle and something to light it.

When everything possibly handy had been assembled and placed where she could easily reach it, she chose a book, some rather popular introduction into the history of the Giant Wars, and settled down on the bed to read.

But she couldn´t concentrate. Nervousness crept into her until it filled her every cell. She had to muster all the iron discipline she possessed to keep herself from jumping off the bed to do something – redecorate the room, smash in the window and climb out of it, bang her head against the wall – no matter what, as long as she was doing **something.**

Reading became impossible. All her concentration was fixed on keeping herself from screaming with frustrated energy. And then she felt her hands starting to tremble again. No shock this time. It had started.

Hermione careful laid her book aside, where she wouldn´t damage it, and once more surveyed her surroundings. She had done everything in her power. Then she slipped under the soft blankets of her bed, felt the shivering start and her will losing control over her body, and prepared for hell.

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"When shall we two meet again, Severus?", Remus asked jokingly when they met over dinner in the Great Hall.

Gods, he had completely forgotten about their research on the Imperius! There was no way how Remus could enter his chambers without detecting everything at once. Even if Hermione remained silent and kept to her room, the werewolf's sharp ears and nose would tell him all he needed to know.

"Not for a long time, I´m, afraid", he answered, keeping the regret he felt out of his voice. As strange as it seemed, he would miss their work together, but it just wouldn´t do to let Remus know this.

"Albus has assigned me to a special project,", he lowered his voice conspiringly, "associated with Order business."

"Oh", Remus didn´t appear to be taken aback, "Could I be of any help?"

"No."

"What is this project about, then?", Remus went on asking, oblivious to Severus´ rapidly worsening mood.

"It is not my place to tell you, Remus", he answered, "The Headmaster asked me to keep this confidential, and I won´t betray his trust."

"Of course", finally, Remus seemed to notice the coldness of his voice, "I´ll work on the Imperius alone, then. If you could spare a table in you lab and some materials…"

"No."

"Then… I´ll only work on it when I can´t disturb you… perhaps in your absence…"

Severus deeply regretted to see Remus so confused and hurt. The werewolf had experienced too many rejections in his life to take them lightly, something he and Severus were very much alike. But he had to have the guarantee that Remus wouldn´t enter his chambers again, as the recalibration of the magical entrance simply took to long. He didn´t have time for that, not at the moment.

"No, Remus", he answered, slipping back into the role of the scowling, foul mouthed bastard he had been for so long. He hoped that it would give him the strength to get this done, "I meant that you won´t enter my chambers again without my direct permission."

"Well, if you don´t want me in your rooms, I certainly won´t bother you", Remus answered, trying to snap at him but failing miserable. Strange, that the werewolf should have kept his softness in spite of all he´d survived, while he, Severus, had turned into stone.

"That was what I´d hoped for."

_Damn you, Miss Granger! Damn your stupid little ploys! They cost me a friend._

But Remus couldn´t let it stand at that. No, he was just to bloody stubborn in his despair to understand. He´d trie to reach out for him, Severus could see it in the other man´s eyes, and that was something he couldn´t bear.

"What is the matter, Severus? I mean, I had thought that we had become partners over the last months, perhaps even friends. But now you…"

"There is nothing further to discuss, Remus. If you will excuse me now, I have other matters to attend to."

Abruptly, he stood up and left the table, leaving Remus looking after him like a whipped dog. Great. Now he was a heartless monster again, and it was all Miss Granger´s fault. But it was no use, mourning for the past. He had learnt that long ago.

His swift strides through the entrance hall were broken when a stern voice called after him.

"Professor Snape! A word please. One of your Slytherins…"

It was Minerva McGonagall, trailing after him with a murderous expression. Students saw her coming and scattered out of the way, their eyes round and curious. So the Potions Master was in again for a scolding from the Head of Gryffindor house? How they´d love to listen!

"I have no time for your petty student matters, Professor", he snarled back and forced her to quicken her steps, "If you can´t control your Gryffindors…"

They turned around the corner, out of the student´s sight, and Minerva McGonagall´s expression turned from stony disapproval to highly amused in a heartbeat.

"Gods", she laughed, "Have you seen their faces? It reminded me a bit of that movie I saw some time ago – King Kong and Godzilla or something."

"I´m happy to announce that I do not share your taste of muggle idiocy, Minerva", he answered, grinning as well. Rely on Minerva to lighten his mood in a heartbeat.

"I´m a generous woman, Severus", she retorted, "I allow everyone his very own type of idiocy. That goes especially for you, you brooding old man", Abruptly, she turned serious, "Although your foul mood rather belongs the category of natural catastrophies. What is the matter with you, dear? You haven´t been yourself all day! Treating Remus like this – is there anything wrong?"

Expressionless, Severus stared at her, concentrating all his will on the decision **not** to tell her. He had become quite close to Minerva over the last years, and her completely un-Gryffindor quality to keep everything he told her absolutely secret had turned her into his preferred conversational partner. And she was the one person in the castle that loved competing and taunting as much as he. Their playful fights over students, house cups and Quidditch matches had become famous among the staff, but only few realized that the conflict for the main part stemmed from the fun it caused them both.

But he couldn´t tell her. Dumbledore wanted nobody to know, and he had chosen for Snape to care for Hermione Granger, the Gods knew why.

"Why are you looking at me like this? Severus?"

Minerva knew the young man by her side well enough not to be angered by his strange lack of response. Instead, she simply decided to change the topic. Severus would find her if he needed to talk.

"Very well", she said crisply, "If there´s nothing I can do for you – I need to employ your legendary abilities a an agony aunt."

He grinned to that, the emotion alighting his face, and she answered with a grin as wicked as his.

"What is it, Minerva? Something your stubbornness cannot conquer? Don´t tell me one of your Gryffindors…"

"I´m worried about Hermione", she interrupted him seriously.

God damn her bloody timing!

"Albus told everyone that her parents were attacked and she went into hiding with them, but something is not right about that. I didn´t hear anything about an attack, and I didn´t see her before she left. And Mr. Potter and Mr. Weasley babbled something about her "apprenticeship" with me. Really, I am at a loss. And I don´t understand why Albus is keeping things from me!"

"I honestly don´t understand your worries, Minerva", he tried to sound lightly, unconcerned, but could hear himself that he was failing miserably, "Everything seems to be in perfect order!"

And he was supposed to be a master spy! He couldn´t even fool an old woman teaching Transfiguration! But, admittedly, she was one of the finest minds in wizard society, and there was hardly anyone these days who knew him better. Unfortunately, scowling and refusing an answer simply wouldn´t work with her.

Her eyes narrowed as she stared at him suspiciously, "You know something, Severus, don´t you?", she asked, and then all her authority as teacher and Head of her house slammed in, "You will tell me this instant! Hermione Granger belongs to my house and is my responsibility. I have a right to know everything that concerns her!"

"But I really don´t know…"

"Severus", this was the voice that made fully grown students duck in panic, "It wasn´t a question, and you´re not too old for a serious tongue lashing!"

He sighed in defeat.

"I ´d really like to tell you, Minerva", he answered, and it was the truth. He´d love to let an organized mind like hers to bring some order in the chaos that was currently situated in his head, "But, as I told Remus, this is not for me to tell. Albus ordered me to keep it secret, and I won´t break my word. I never have", he said darkly.

"So you do know something about Hermione?"

"Go to Albus, Minerva. Ask him. And, if he answers, I would be relieved to share all I know with you."

Once more, her clear gaze pierced him, and suddenly he was reminded of Hermione Granger´s defiant eyes, the stubborn set of her mouth. _Gryffindor women_, he thought, despairing, _A man is truly lost besides them_.

"I will", she finally answered him, and to his surprise patted his shoulder comfortingly, "Don´t you worry. Albus won´t dare keep his answers from me."

He wasn´t sure if that shouldn´t rather frighten him.

-------------------------------

When he returned to his quarters it was already late, and his mood was as dark as the night outside. So much for friendship and peace, he thought unnerved. Menschen sind anstrengend, and nothing would ever change that. First Remus, then Minerva, and now Hermione Granger was probably already waiting for him, in her totally calm, impertinent manner.

She hadn´t called for him. Well, the longer it took for the withdrawal symptoms to set in, the better. But the real reason for his relief was the fact that he didn´t know how to deal with her.

Again and again, the images from her head had invaded his mind, had distracted and irritated him, until he had snapped at everyone around him and returned to full "Snape the bastard" mode. And, of course, Minerva had to notice that something was amiss with him.

But how could he have told her about the things he had seen? Hell, he couldn´t even tell Albus! The old man would be devastated, or he wouldn´t believe it. Perhaps he would even ask Severus to let him witness the things he´d seen. And that wasn´t an option.

It had long ago become Severus´ second nature to protect the old wizard from the realities of his work as a spy, at least as far as it was possible to him. The decisions Dumbledore had to make were difficult enough without knowing all the consequences they entailed.

One simply couldn´t wage a war against an enemy like Voldemort and care for every single fighter. Casualties were unavoidable, and if there was nothing to be done, Severus at least didn´t want to be pitied. But it seemed as if Miss Granger didn´t have scruples of this kind.

In fact, Severus wondered whether she had any scruples at all.

Again, the images rose in his mind, her moaning face, twisted in a grimace of lust below the muscular body of Lucius Malfoy, her pleading and screaming. Her unrestrained triumph, the emotions that shone on her face as readable as a book. How could she. She was Potter´s friend, nearly a member of the Order, and witness to all the victims this war had taken. And it probably turned her on!

He went over to a small cabinet, that was situated between the book cases, opened its wooden doors and poured himself a whisky. He felt sick. Not even Lucius had been as mad and perverted as this when he was eighteen!

And now she was sitting in his guest room, probably waiting for him turning up to taunt him with this insolent smile of hers.

He sighed again, and ran a hand through his black hair. But she was his responsibility, and he had to at least take a short look at her, to assure himself that she was all right and hadn´t found a way to escape his rooms. By now, he wouldn´t put anything past her.

He climbed the staircase, whisky still in his left hand, and knocked at her door. No reaction. Great. Now he had to open her door without her permission, and with the luck he had tonight, she would be taking a bath or dancing naked through the room or whatever…

Now, where had that thought come from? He cursed himself and his incredible ability to get into trouble again, and carefully opened the door. The room was completely dark, except for the dancing flame sin the fireplace. He opened the door completely and entered.

She was lying in her bed, if asleep or just pretending to he couldn´t say. He frowned. It wasn´t that late, and anyway he didn´t intend to respect her every whim over the next weeks.

"Miss Granger", he said loudly, "A word please."

Still no reaction. Did she want to mock him? Well, she would soon learn not to try her little games with him. With a flick of his wand, he ignited the candles that were clattered around the room.

Suddenly, he felt his muscles tense and his body pumping with adrenaline. Something was wrong, his eyes and ears screamed at him warningly. She wasn´t just asleep!

With three long steps, he was beside her bed and looking down at her. Wide open eyes stared unseeingly at him, out of a face that was as white as the sheets.

He touched her forehead and gasped at the heat she radiated. Snape removed the blankets she had tucked tightly around herself. She wore pyjamas that were soaked with sweat, her hair was plaited into a tight braid, and on the nightstand he noticed a Krug of water with a glass beside it.

_She has prepared herself,_ he thought angrily, _and she wanted to do this on her own, the foolish girl! _

A short diagnosis spell confirmed his fears. High fever, a barely existing magical energy level and a racing heart. She needed to cool down. He wetted a towel from her bathroom and used it to clean her sweaty face, then let another one rest on her forehead to reduce her temperature.

He checked her eyes and found them still wide open, unmoving and not reacting to what went on around her.

"Miss Granger", he said loudly, trying to call her back to reality, "Miss Granger!"

She still didn´t react, but suddenly started to shiver violently, her legs and arms jerking wildly, and short, high-pitched whimpers escaping her lips.

"Miss Granger", starting to feal really concerned now, Severus took her by the shoulders and gently shook her, "You will answer me this minute, or you will have detention for the next three years!"

The stern teacher-voice seemed to help. She groaned and her eyes closed in pain, only to snap open again a second later. This time, her gaze was focused and sharp, for a moment she looked like jumping up and defending herself, until the memory kicked in and she let her head fall back onto the pillow.

"This, Miss Granger", Severus said grimly while removing the wet cloth from her forehead, "was such a stupid action that I didn´t except it, not even from you!"

Her smile was a ghost, and her voice weak, but both were absolutely controlled and showed nothing of the pain she must be feeling.

"Yet another compliment, Professor", she whispered, "You are spoiling me."

"This is not funny, you foolish girl", he snapped angrily, "I am responsible for you, and I have no wish to explain to the Headmaster why you didn´t even survive the first night in my custody. Why didn´t you call?"

Her face paled even more, and she closed her eyes while the pain overwhelmed her.

"I don´t want to be a burden to you, Professor", she said quietly, only to curl herself up into a ball as a violent fit of coughing shook her body.

"You are a burden anyway", he answered coldly, "And your stupidity only increases this. From now on, you will obey my commands, do you hear?"

Still coughing, she tried to nod, but managed only a feeble movement of her head before the shivering took over again.

He waited till the fit subsided, then he helped her to lie back down and straightened the blankets around her.

"Have you experienced any hallucinations yet?"

She shook her head to that.

"Unless you are one?", she whispered hopefully.

Severus had to turn his head to hide an inappropriate grin. Courage she had, he couldn´t deny her that. But it wouldn´t do to pity her. This was all her fault, and he was forced to waste valuable time because a greedy girl couldn´t satisfy her lust in a healthier way. Damn her!

"I will give you a fever reducing potion that will also make you sleep now, and wait here until it takes effect ", he informed her, "It won´t help you to a sleep without nightmares, but at least you will get a few hours rest. You need the strength."

Again, her only reaction was a short nod, but her eyes were keen and sharp as she watched his every movement. He took a vial out of one hidden pocket in his cloak, uncorked it and poured some of its content in the glass by her bed.

She swallowed obediently.

"Thank you", she said, then her eyes closed, and only a few moments later her breathing became the regular and deep breathing of sleep.

He watched her for a moment, her now peaceful face, void of control, ambition and pain. She looked very young and vulnerable in her blue pyjamas and the braided hair. But he couldn´t forget that other Hermione Granger, that other face with wide open eyes and a screaming mouth, the openings dark like caves, that screamed her triumph into the world.

He couldn´t forget what she really was. And he mustn´t let concern and pity take over. She was a monster, and a monster she would stay no matter what she would endure over the next weeks. She had betrayed him to her pleasure, and he must never forget this. More than only his life depended on it.

He rose from her bed and walked over to the door, but the moment he left her side, her movements and breath became irregular again. She was twitching and fidgeting, her arms moving weakly as if she struggled against an invisible weight.

"No", she whispered, her voice barely audible, "Don´t, please!"

_Here we go_, he though bitterly, _my good old friends the nightmares come_. He didn´t want to know about the disturbing pictures that reigned her now and caused her fear. If she had watched things terrible enough to follow her into her dreams, it was entirely her fault. She had chosen this. She had brought it upon herself.

"You deserve it all, Miss Granger", he whispered, then left the room and closed the door behind him.

Her screaming voice followed him through the corridor, raised in pleading as she cried out to whatever comfort she could still hope for: "No! Don´t leave me! Please!"

Then he entered his bedroom and there was only the silence of the night.

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A/N: Here we go again! I didn´t make it to ten reviews (but nine can be considered nearly ten, can´t they), but still a huge thank you to everyone of my faithful readers!

The next chapter will get even darker as the withdrawal kicks in. And it will have Draco in it plus a very confused Snape...

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"When shall we two meet again" - alludes to Shakespeare´s evil witches in "MacBeth" (but they are three, of course)

"Menschen sind anstrengend" - People are strenuous, unnerving, my personal (and not very good) translation of the famous sentence from "Homo Faber" by Max Frisch

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OH, and one more question: I´ve been wondering whether Snape and Hermione should enter into something romantical, or whether they should just stay friends in this fic. Tell me your opinion on it, and perhaps, if the decision is overwhelming, I will bow to it...


	9. To Hell

To Hell 

Alone in his office, Albus Dumbledore watched the light waning outside Hogwarts while he sipped on his hot chocolate, marvelling at its taste. He needed every consolation he could get at the moment.

The report Severus had given him on Miss Granger's condition some minutes ago had worried him more than he had shown to the brooding man. It wasn't only her fever and the bodily reactions that caused him to stare now into the night as if in search for answers.

It was the cold and completely detached voice in which the Potions Master had informed him about these facts. Severus wasn't worrying for Miss Granger as Albus was, he wasn't even feeling pity. Something in his face had expressed satisfaction with Miss Granger's state.

In all his years of knowing Severus, the young man had always seemed rather overprotective to Dumbledore. Caring too much for his students, pouring far too much energy and heart into ensuring their well-being. Worrying himself sick over those Slytherins that were injured or turned over to the dark side. Every student that had given up, every boy and girl that had left the path of the light had been considered a personal failure by Severus. He had always blamed himself more than his protégées.

But not so with Miss Granger. Had it been a mistake to let Severus watch over her? But it had seemed so logical at the time. The man had gone through much of what Miss Granger suffered now, he knew what it was like to hide in the darkness, and Dumbledore had hoped, in his typical, madly optimistic way, that the two of them could perhaps help each other.

And he so desperately needed the girl to succeed!

One year ago, when Voldemort´s return had finally been out in the open and the Ministry had acknowledged the danger he posed, Dumbledore's hopes had been high. He had expected complications, surely, but never had he doubted that the fight would soon be over.

Now however, one year of failures, betrayal and disappointments later, he wasn't so sure anymore. The Ministry's aurors and the Order were working hand in hand, additional programmes and enormous funds had been assembled, but whatever they did, Voldemort always seemed to be a step ahead of them.

The only successes they had had over the last months had been due to Miss Granger's information. Before he had even noticed it, this young woman had become the key to Voldemort´s destruction, Dumbledore's sole reason for hope.

One year ago, this hope had rested on Harry. Harry…

Dumbledore sighed and scanned the darkness outside, searching for answers that wouldn´t be found. Harry hadn't developed the way he had expected. After Dumbledore had told him about the prophecy, he had hoped that Harry would mature quickly and settle for the task that awaited him.

He had hated to rob the boy of what little was left of his childhood, but their enemy had grown too powerful to ignore him. But Harry hadn't appeared interested in lessons, duelling or preparations for the things to come. Instead, Harry seemed to have retreated into the consolations of normalcy, working for school, playing Quidditch and planning pranks with his friend, Ronald Weasley.

It was Hermione who had fulfilled his expectations, the one member of the Golden Trio he had taken the least seriously. _What fools we mortals be_, he thought resignedly.

A knocking at the door disturbed him. Before he could answer, however, the door was flung open and Minerva McGonagall rushed into the room.

"Minerva", he greeted her politely, rising from his chair and walking towards her, "What a pleasure to see you! However, I must tell you that I have a meeting tonight, which I absolutely must attend to. Therefore, if you don't mind, we could perhaps think of a better time for…"

"I do mind, Albus", she cut in crisply, "I do mind very much. Stop hiding from me, you insufferable man!"

"I don't know what you are talking about, my dear", he replied amiably, "This time of the year is always very busy – but if you think I have neglected you, I will certainly…"

"Albus Dumbledore! I may not be as old as you, but I am no fool! Something is wrong with Hermione Granger, and I intent to find out."

"Whatever may have given you that idea, Minerva?" Dumbledore's blue eyes were twinkling desperately by now, but Minerva was far from being merciful.

"First, she vanishes in the middle of the night. I am not informed until a day later, I am not the one to tell her, I don't even get to see her before she is gone. Never since I became Head of Gryffindor House have you neglected´ me like that, Albus. Second, she has neither written nor talked to me during the last two days. This is Hermione Granger we are talking about! Even after the basilisk had petrified her, the first thing she asked for was her homework. She would never go into hiding without class material for two months in advance! And third, Severus is suddenly back to his old, scowling self. When I scold him for biting Remus´ head of, he behaves like a little boy caught with a lie. A lie that is directly connected to Miss Granger."

She stopped and glowered at him, her intimidating stare immediately reducing him to a six-year-old Albus who had stolen candy out of the kitchen.

"So could you now please stop fooling around and tell me what has happened to Miss Granger?"

He knew that he'd lost. So he told her everything.

When he had finished, he saw tears standing in her eyes. Silently, he offered her a handkerchief and a cup of hot chocolate. She accepted both.

"The poor girl", she finally said after silence had filled the room for some minutes, "I had hoped so much that she'd wait at least until the end of school."

She looked up from her lap to see Dumbledore staring at her, dumbfounded.

"Did you know about it, Minerva?" he asked nonplussed.

"No, for heaven's sake, Albus! Of course I didn't know! I would have stopped her immediately if I'd known! But unlike all of you", she paused and looked at him critically, "I never underestimated her."

"My dear Minerva, I never", Dumbledore protested, but she interrupted him again.

"Not knowingly, Albus. But you and all the others have always concentrated on Ron and Harry. They were the duo for the reckless stunts; they caused the problems and made a good show of it. Hermione wasn't the one for action. She researched, supported them, helped them through school. What none of you noticed was her cunning, brilliant mind, her ruthlessness and her will to sacrifice everything, even herself, to rescue her friends. Mr. Potter and Mr. Weasley were always easy to stop. But since her first year, I have worried about Miss Granger's abilities. Because I knew that if she decided to "take action", we wouldn't be able to stop her."

She sighed, and suddenly her face looked worn and haggard, "She's too brilliant for her friends, Albus. They never were a match for her. And I wonder if, in a few years time, even you will be a match for her."

-----------------------------------

After two nights and days of raging fever, the symptoms vanished and left Hermione weak as a newborn kitten. She had never felt that ill and alone before.

The headaches had been the worst. The shivering fits, the fever, all that she could bear, but those pains had split her head like lightning split a tree. She couldn't think, she couldn't talk. Hell, she couldn't weep of pain. Sleep had been impossible.

And the only thing she had seen when she could fight the fever dreams enough to open her eyes had been his sardonic smirk, his spiteful face that had written "I hate you and you deserve it" all over it.

Snape had been in and out of her chamber, applying cleansing spells, offering her water and administering potions. Never had he talked a word more than absolutely necessary. Never had he appeared to care what state she was in.

But still, despite his loathing and disgust, his presence had become a consolation to her. In her loneliness, only he made her feel at least remotely human. She didn´t mind that he did so by permanently insulting her, she was used to it by now. She had never heard much else from Snape anyway. She just hoped that her fever dreams hadn't revealed more than was good for her…

_Stop brooding_, she scolded herself, _Time to get going, Hermione!_

Carefully, she lowered her feet down to the floor and tried to stand up, only to hectically grab the bed stead for support as her legs folded up under her. Weak as a kitten, indeed. One moment, she considered lying down again and waiting for Snape to help her.

But the image of Snape, taking her into his arms and carrying her to the bathroom, gave her enough strength to make it on her own.

It was hard work, taking a bath. It took her nearly an hour to feel clean again. Once, she even fell asleep in the bathtub, waking only when a pink bubble tickled her nose. But finally, after much cursing and very slow, careful movements, she managed to leave the bathroom without graver injuries, chose a new pyjama and a warm, woollen robe and sat down on the edge of her bed to tidy her hair.

It was in this moment that Snape burst into the room, as usually without bothering to knock. Her sight caught him unprepared, and he faltered in midstep, nearly stumbled, and came to a rather abrupt stop in front of her.

"I see you are feeling better today", he remarked icily.

"I am. Thank you for enquiring, Professor."

"This was not meant to be polite, Miss Granger. I see no reason to show someone like you any politeness. My concern is your health, nothing else."

"I think I´ve fully understood that by now, Professor."

He didn´t even bother looking at her, she noticed angrily, he just drew his wand and pointed it at her.

"Your bodily functions appear to be normal. Do you know who and where you are?"

"I do", she answered with the ghost of a smile, "Unfortunately."

He nodded shortly, not even acknowledging her attempt to lighten the atmosphere.

"You do also know that this is only a temporary recovery? It will get worse soon, much worse. Soon you will very much regret what you have done."

Well, that was an encouraging thought! He did have a talent to rub salt into her wounds.

"I will never regret what I´ve done, Sir", she answered quietly, "But I realize that the worst is yet to come."

He sneered at that, but seemingly didn´t find it worthy of a comment.

"Then I should inform you that Mr. Malfoy has been trying to knock down my front door for two days. I could only send him away by promising to inform him whenever you felt able to talk to him."

"I would very much like to talk to him", she answered hastily, her heart beating faster. She was yearning for a friendly face, a word not spoken to insult her, "Could you inform him as soon as possible?"

"You can´t await his visit, can you?", Snape asked bitterly, "Perhaps because he reminds you of Lucius, Miss Granger? You probably can´t await to rush into your lovers arms, either."

He turned around and left the room, not noticing how pale Hermione had become at his words. She´d never want to connect Draco´s warm, tender face to his father´s. Those eyes, so piercingly blue, assessing her, undressing her while his silky voice uttered obscenities…

Hermione shuddered, and quickly moved over to the window. She had been dead wrong about Snape. He wasn´t a consolation. He was a pain in the ass, and she would never feel safe before she´d left his chambers for good.

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Snape´s owl had transformed Draco´s anxiety into a rush of excitement. Carefully burning the short letter that said nothing but "You may visit her", he rushed out of the Common Room, not even bothering to collect his outer robes from the dormitory.

When he reached the potions classroom, Snape was already waiting for him in front of the open door of his office.

"Professor", Draco greeted eagerly, "How is she?"

"Alive", Snape answered coolly, "Everything else you can ask her. Follow me."

Swiftly, Snape led him through his barren chambers and through the magic carpet, not even trying to hide his displeasure about the continual invasion of his chambers by students. Gods, he had hidden these rooms for a reason!

He didn´t leave Draco any time to marvel at his library, or at the magic tapisserie, but led him up to the second floor and to Hermione´s bedroom.

"Five minutes", he warned Draco before opening the door, "She needs rest."

Drawing a deep breath, Draco tried to steady himself for the confrontation that was surely to come. He was sweating like a nervous first year! But before he could resume a calm countenance, Snape softly pushed him forward and closed the door behind him.

He had barely entered the room when Hermione rushed up to him and buried herself in his arms. Holding her close and rubbing her back with calming, circular movements, Draco felt relief cursing through him and melting the tight knot in his stomach.

She had forgiven him, somehow. She wasn´t pushing him away.

"How are you, love?", he whispered in her ear, using his favourite nickname for her.

"He´s driving me crazy", he heard her answer against the green wool of his school robes, "I´m going mad here, Draco!"

Suddenly, she was gone again, leaving himon his own by the door. She started to pace her room, radiating nervous energy and aggressiveness.

"I´m trapped here!", she snapped, I´m going insane, and he won´t let me out, the overgrown bat."

"Is he treating you alright?"

She stopped abruptly and whirled around to face him, her eyes suddenly alert and wary.

"Why do you ask?"

"Because I care for you, Hermione! Gods, I know well enough that you and Snape start fighting the moment you enter the same room. I was terribly worried!"

Something in his words had relaxed her, and she reached out to tenderly touch his face.

"Don´t be", she answered softly, "But I´m glad you came. At least there´s one person in this damn school that cares for me as a human being, not as something he can put to use."

To his astonishment, he saw her eyes fill with tears. What was happening to her, for Goodness sake?

"I thought I´d lost you", he whispered, "I was afraid you´d never talk to me again. And I would have understood it. I´m so sorry, love! I should have trusted you!"

"No", she said thoughtfully, her head leaning on his shoulder, "You were absolutely right. I wouldn´t have survived the next months. Don´t feel guilty, and don´t worry about my behaviour. It´s just the withdrawal that makes me act so strangely. I have brought this upon myself, and I must bear the consequences."

"Hermione", he began, wanting to promise her that he would never fail her again, but Snape´s cold, snarling voice cut through their nearness.

"Well, well, as much as I hate it to interrupt such a sweet display, I´m afraid that it´s time for you to leave, Draco."

He saw Hermione flinch bak from him, suddenly avoiding all physical contact as if she had burned herself.

"But, Professor…"

"I won´t discuss it, Draco."

He reached out for her one last time, but she wouldn´t meet his eyes anymore.

"Call me if you need anything", he said and turned away.

She didn´t speak, but her eyes followed him through the room with a strangely hungry expression until the door closed behind him.

"There is one more thing I must discuss with you, Professor", Draco said while he followed Snape down the stairs.

"Sit down", Snape answered pleasantly and offered him a chair.

"Two days ago", Draco began slowly, "My father enclosed a letter to Hermione in one addressed to me. He asked me to give the letter to her as soon as I found a possibility. I wasn´t sure… You know of the nature of their… relationship", he blushed, "and I was afraid it might agitate her, but if the information it contains is important, it wouldn´t do to deliver it too late…"

"You were right to tell me, Draco", Snape said, and unreadable expression in his eyes, "Hand it over, and I will discuss with the Headmaster whether to give it to her."

Draco nodded, relieved to be rid of this burden, and carefully extracted the dark green envelope from one of his pockets.

Snape took it and then led Draco over to magical door of his chambers.

"Close the office door carefully behind you", he said, and then, as Draco´s silhouette was already melting into the golden glow, "I will keep you informed."

Draco´s grateful smile caused a pain in his chest. The boy had kept his trust and inner warmth, despite a father like Lucius Malfoy, and now the little bitch was using exactly these qualities to manipulate him. It would kill him to learn of her betrayal.

He returned to the sofa while unfolding the letter, and slowly sat down to read it. He read it twice, a grim expression on his face.

Ten he rose again, ascended to the first floor and opened Hermione´s door without knocking. She was sitting on her bed, obviously awaiting him.

"So the father isn´t enough for you", he asked her icily, "You had to seduce the son as well?"

"Draco and me are just friends", she replied stiffly, "There´s nothing even remotely romantical between us."

"I doubt that you even know the meaning of the term "romantical", Miss Granger", he commented acidly.

"Why don´t you just let me be, Professor?", she asked, tiredness seeping into her voice, "Im not feeling very good."

"That´s not my problem, is it?", he demanded aggressively, but then his tone changed abruptly, "Anyway, I am not wasting your precious time because your presence is such a pleasure to me. I have a letter to deliver."

"Who should write to me?", despair and frustration made her voice tight, "Don´t mock me, Professor. I´m already down on my knees."

She felt terrible, and her emotions were running wild. She wanted to rush over and kick him, but at the same time wished for nothing more than a strong embrace and endless crying. She could cry her heart out, she believed, and she didn´t mean it as a metaphor.

"Your favourite position, isn´t it, Miss Granger?", he snarled, "But I think I´ll decline the offer, thank you. Your darling lover has written to you."

He saw blood rising to her cheeks, her eyes widening in slow realization.

"Let me read it out to you – it´s such a lovely letter", he didn´t give her time to react, but unfolded the parchment and started in a sickly sweet voice, "Dear Hermione!"

He knew that what he did was wrong, but honestly, he was too angry to care. This stupid girl had cost him friendship, free time and his peace of mind, and he wanted to wipe that arrogant expression of perfect control out!

"Don't, Professor", she whispered, her face now deadly pale, "Please, don't do this to me! I can't bear…"

"Oh, but you could bear fucking him, couldn't you", he cut in roughly, "Why not listen to his love vows then, Miss Granger?"

"Dear Hermione", he started anew, ignoring her shaking voice that begged him to stop, "Draco told me about your… effort. Brilliant as your idea was, you shouldn't have tried this on your own. HE, however, is very pleased by your diligence. HE told me HIMself that for a mudblood you have shown impressive valour. I do hope however that those brainless idiots won't keep you in hiding for too long."

He paused and saw that she had turned away from him, facing the fireplace, both her hands resting on the iron grate that kept the safely within the stone fireplace.

So, she was ignoring him, was she? He had planned to stop there, not wanting to force the rest of the letter on her. Hell, this was so disgusting he didn't even wish to say it loud! But her rigid back mocked him, challenged him, and two could play this game.

"We are preparing something special for your return. I can't await your body writhing under me, Hermione. You will crawl before me, beg me for more, and I will find ways to overstep even your limitless lust for pain! Do you remember when I whipped you? The knotted leather that sliced your tender skin and your screams of lust? I will make you scream again, Hermione! I will make you beg for mercy and sob with relief when I take you, ravage your body, defile you in every possible way…"

He stopped. This had gone too far. Even if she enjoyed such filth, she was under his care, and he shouldn't have responded to her childish challenge.

But she still didn't move. She stood by the fireplace, her fists clenched around the sharp points of the iron bars, stiff and lifeless as a statue. Something wasn´t right with her. Perhaps she felt a fit coming again?

"Miss Granger", he asked coldly, "Return to your bed immediately."

She whinced as if his voice had hurt her.

"Miss Granger", he repeated impatiently.

"No", she whispered hoarsely, nearly growling the words, "I will kill myself before you touch me again!"

Had she gone completely mad now? Irritated, Snape started to walk towards her, but stopped abruptly when she whirled around to face him. Blood was dripping from her hands; she had gripped the point of the grating so strongly that they had driven into her palms and caused deep, blood gushing wounds. But it were her eyes that shocked him. The eyes of a madwoman, huge and dark in a face devoid of all colour.

"What did you say, Miss Granger?"

"Don´t come any nearer, Lucius! Please, don´t hurt me!"

She was hallucinating, he realized suddenly. Something in the letter had agitated her enough to cause such a strong reaction. He cursed his own carelessness.

"I am not Lucius Malfoy, Miss Granger. I am Severus Snape, your Potions Master, and I won't hurt you. Don´t be afraid."

But why should she fear him, even if she took him for Malfoy? Certainly, her… lover wouldn´t hurt her, not if she didn´t want to at least.

"Is this a game?", she asked, becoming more hysterical by the minute, "For I won´t play it… Don´t make me do those things again… Let me go… please, Lucius, I can´t! Don´t hurt me!"

"But isn´t that exactly what you want?", he replied bitterly, his patience wearing thin, "That he hurts you?"

She screamed when he crossed the distance between them, and crouched down with her back against the fireplace, the fear rocking her skinny body.

"No!", she panicked, "I´d never want that…never again! Why do you torture me so? You wouldn´t even treat a dog like that… it nearly killed me last time, didn´t you notice? Don´t, I beg you, Lucius!"

"Calm down, Miss Granger!", her agitation frightened him, and he could still see those huge eyes following him fearfully, mistaking him for Malfoy and flinching with his every move,

"Everything´s all right now. There´s nothing to be afraid of. Relax."

"I can´t play that game anymore! I´m sorry… I tried… I know I should be stronger…I can´t bear you touching me any longer! Please, don´t be angry with me!"

"It is all right", he tried to soothe her, "Nobody would blame you for that. You didn´t do anything wrong."

"But I failed them!", she sobbed, the last shreds of reality failing her, leaving her in her own private hell, "I have to get them through this war alive, but I´m too weak! I failed them! Gods, I failed them all! I´m nothing but a filthy whore, and I can´t even do that right!"

Suddenly, an idea seemed to enter the mad chaos of her thoughts and she tried to stand up, half supported by the fireplace.

"But you won´t hurt them Lucius?", she whispered breathlessly, fear and the need to deceive fighting in her body, "I can be really nice, Lucius, I can give you pleasures you never dreamed of!", Big tears were running down her face, but she didn´t even notice, "Do with me whatever you want, but don´t hurt the others, please!"

Horror overwhelmed Severus as her trembling fingers reached out to touch his face, to stroke him clumsily, her whole body twisted in a grimace of desire. He shrank back from her, put as much distance between them as was possible, and she immediately seemed to forget his presence.

She slid down to the floor again, her arms embracing the knees that she had drawn to her chest, her body rocking forward and backward in a helpless effort to calm herself.

"I´ll do what must be done… I´ll do what must be done", she whispered again, completely oblivious to her surroundings now.

Never in his life had he felt so helpless before, not even when he´d had to stand by and watch muggles being tortured by the Dark Lord. For she was torturing herself in front of his very eyes, punishing herself for something he couldn´t understand, and he couldn´t do anything.

"You´re stupid", she murmured now fervently to herself, "You´re simply too stupid! Stupid little mudblood whore Hermione!"

Against his better judgment, Severus decided to stop this. He simply couldn´t watch any longer. Carefully, he inched nearer, one slow step after the other. It took an eternity to cross the room, but she didn´t even notice him in her panic. Only when he crouched down beside her did she realize his presence and started to scream again, the frightened, pitiful screams of a small animal.

He took her by the shoulders before she could crawl away from him, and started shaking her softly.

"Miss Granger", he called, "Miss Granger, listen to me."

It didn´t seem to have any effect on her, and her panic only increased.

"Hermione!", he tried again, hoping that the use of her surname would calm her, "Hermione, it´s me, Professor Snape. Listen to my voice! Nobody is going to hurt you, you´re safe here. Do you listen to me, Hermione?"

Slowly, she stopped fighting and lifted her head towards him. Her face was still a mask of pain and fear, but some reason had returned to her eyes and she recognized him. To his imminent surprise, the sight of him seemed to relax her immediately. Her lips were bleeding where she had bitten on them. She tried to speak, but her voice was hoarse from the screaming and it took her two attempts to be understandable.

"Pro…fessor Snape", she whispered, "What happened?"

"Can´t you remember, Miss Granger?"

"No… you were telling me something, weren´t you? And then all went black. I´m sorry I didn´t listen to you, Professor", she excused herself worriedly

"I think I might refrain from deducing house points for that", he answered dryly, and, shockingly, she smiled to that, "You were hallucinating, Miss Granger. You mistook me for someone else and panicked."

Fear clouded her face once more. "Did I say something?", she asked.

What was she trying to hide, Severus asked himself. Her fear of Lucius Malfoy? The real state of her mind? But why hadn´t she told him? And how did the pictures he had seen in her mind fit into all this? And idea suddenly took hold of him. After all, she was the cleverest witch he had ever taught. It wasn´t impossible that she…

"No", he answered finally, "nothing intelligible anyway. But we should get you back into bed now. It could start again any minute."

She nodded to that, and with his help managed to stand up and make it to her bed. If she noticed the care with which he spread the blankets over her, much more care than he had shown her during the last days, she didn´t comment on it.

"There´s something I´ve got to tell you, Professor", she murmured, fighting against the sleep that tried to consume her.

"Do it then, Miss Granger."

"When it gets bad again… when I start hallucinating, you must tie my hands to the bed."

He was dumbstruck.

"Why in the world should I do such a thing?", he asked her.

"Because I can do wandless magic", she said in a tired whisper, "Not as much as you can, Professor, but there are quite a lot of spells I can manage. It would be too dangerous for you and me to let me keep control over my hands. I haven´t managed to do it without my hands yet", she explained, and even in her present state, that seemed to anger her.

Severus had to suppress a grin. A-know-it-all to the end, it seemed. Though he sincerely hoped it wouldn´t be her end.

But she was absolutely right. Not only could her uncontrolled magic cause damage and chaos, she could also kill herself when she used the magic on her own body. The remnants of Thanalos in her blood would soak up the magic until she was left a dried shell.

"A valuable advice", he replied neutrally, "I will pay heed to it. Sleep now."

She nodded weakly, but a hint of panic once again entered her eyes when he turned around.

"Don´t leave", she whispered urgently, "Please."

Her eyes, dark with fatigue, met his, "What frightens you so much, Miss Granger?", he asked softly, sitting down at the side of her bed.

"I am not frightened", she replied with such an honest surprise that he would have taken it for real, had he not seen her crawling on the floor minutes ago. Gods, she was the best liar he´d ever seen. "I just don´t want to be alone at the moment."

An hour ago, he would have reacted to this with seething scorn. Now, he simply nodded.

"I won´t leave", he answered, "I am just going to get something to work and a chair, Miss Granger."

When he returned with a stack of essays waiting to be marked, she had already fallen into a deep, troubled sleep.

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A/N: Here we go again!

I´m sorry that this chapter took so long, but I hope you like it anyway and that it will answer some of the questions you asked in your reviews.

I thank you all for this unbelievable amount of reviews - keep them going, I love to read what you think about the story, and some of you are hellishly clever.

For all of you who haven´t given an e-mail address in their bio: I´m trying to answer each review individually, so if you wish for a personal response, please sign with your e-mail. Otherwise: Thank you all so much!


	10. Night and Day

Night and Day

Severus guessed it was a routine of some sort, albeit a routine of madness.

A week had passed since Miss Granger´s first fit of hallucinations. He vaguely remembered that he had been worried when she had mistaken him for Malfoy, that he had been shocked by the amount of fear and panic she had displayed.

But it had been nothing in comparison to what she had been going through for the last six days.

After she had fallen asleep that day, he had settled into an armchair by her bedside. He had tried to read, but had failed miserably. Severus had always taken pride in his ability to distance himself from everything around him. To care, to worry, to forget the things that really mattered over the little task at hand, were mistakes one could only make once. The Death Eaters would see to it that you wouldn´t have time for a second try.

For years, he hadn´t been a man of many weaknesses. He had separated himself strictly from those around him, had not allowed friendships or passions to build. But the last months had made him weak, he had realized as he sat in his armchair and watched her bare, unguarded face.

Then he had sighed and moved over to the fireplace. A whispered word, and flames were dancing merrily. He hadn´t bothered to use his wand. He seldom did inside his chambers.

From one of his hidden pockets, he unearthed a handful of floo powder and tossed it into the fire. "Headmaster´s office", he said clearly and thrust his head through the flames. Opposite to what he had told Miss Granger, his fireplaces were indeed connected to the floo network, but they were keyed to him, and worked only one way. No one except himself could successfully establish a connection, and no one could enter his chambers this way. The connection was highly illegal, hidden by some "magical turbulences" in Hogwart´s walls, devised by Albus when the Dark Lord had reappeared years ago.

"Albus", he called, feeling the flames tickling his skin, "A word, please."

The old wizard´s face had appeared in front of the fireplace, his eyes worried and tired.

"Yes, dear boy", he answered quietly, "I´m here. How is Miss Granger?"

"It has started. She is hallucinating. Albus, you have to cancel my lessons for the next week – she can´t be left alone."

"Of course, Severus", Something changed in the old wizard´s face, worry deepening its lines and creases.

"You don´t have to do this on your own, you know?", he asked, "Minerva and me could help you if you need some… free time."

"No, Albus", Severus practically growled through the fireplace, "She´s my responsibility. You said it yourself. I will manage."

"But, Severus, you know that…"

"I have to go, Albus", Severus cut him short, "She might awaken. I will contact you again tomorrow."

Drawing back his head, Severus noticed that Miss Granger had begun moving and thrashing in her bed. He hurried back to his place by her side, and, as if his presence had calmed her, she lay still once again.

"Miss Granger", he murmured, his silky voice caressing the silence, "You´re driving me quite mad."

How he would have loved to get rid of her! Playing her nurse would prevent him not only from teaching, but from further research with Remus, from his own projects and from his duties as Head of Slytherin. No walks outside in the autumn sunshine, no meals in the Great Hall, no meetings with Minerva.

But letting her out of sight would mean the risk of exposure. In her present state, Miss Granger couldn´t exercise her usual control and discipline, and he wouldn´t allow Albus to know what he, Severus, knew. Although he wasn´t sure anymore what he knew about her. He wasn´t sure about anything anymore.

_And she would hate to be seen in such a state_, some voice inside him whispered. He snorted irritatedly and banished that thought into the farthest corner of his mind.

It had been hours until she awoke again, hours of nightmares and whispered pleads, of restless movements and silent sobs. When she opened her eyes, they held a new expression, an unhealthy brightness.

"I have thought, Professor", she announced slowly, greed and nervousness vibrating in her voice, "It is better for the both of us if we stop this now. You can give me the potion! I promise that I won´t tell Dumbledore. We can just pretend that I´m on withdrawal, I can stay in my room and won´t disturb you!"

Severus had waited for this, but he still had to steel himself against what would surely come.

"No, Miss Granger", he answered coolly, "That is not an option."

"But it´s all the same to you, Professor!", she argued heatedly, "You would lose your responsibility. Think it through! It doesn´t matter to you if I live or die. I betrayed you! You must hate me for that, why should you bother with me? Give me the potion! It´s the best way!"

"No. And I won´t listen to anymore of this nonsense. It is the addiction that is talking, not you."

She sat up in bed and matched his icy stare with her determined brown eyes.

"You will give me the potion!"

"My last word, Miss Granger. No."

With a scream more like that of a cat, she launched herself at him. Their combined weight caused the armchair to tumble backwards, and Severus had the most unpleasant experience of lying helpless on his back, legs pointing into the air, with a scratching and biting Hermione Granger on his lap.

He cursed as one of her fingernails drew a burning line across his face.

"I will kill you!", she screamed, "Give me that potion! Give it to me!"

With an angry snarl, he grabbed both her wrists and transferred them to his left hand. The rough treatment would cause bruises, but he didn´t care at the moment. With a rather ungraceful manoeuvre, he managed to get back to his feet and hauled the fighting and shouting girl back onto her back.

"I´m hating to do this, Miss Granger", he explained while he drew his wand with the right, "But you leave me no choice. This is for your own safety."

Quickly, he cast a petrifying spell that left her unable to move a limb. Only her eyes darted wildly from his face to his wand hand, panic rapidly replacing the fury in them. Another flick of the wand produced four leather cuffs that were fixed to the bed near her hands and feet. Carefully, he bound her to the bed, while he watched the horror dawn on her face.

"No", he heard her whimper, "please, don´t do this! I can´t…"

"You warned me yourself, Miss Granger", he explained tiredly, "I can´t risk you hurting yourself."

"Please! I promise to be good! I won´t resist… You can do with me whatever you want, Professor", she pleaded, "Whatever you want! Just untie me and give me that potion!"

"This is not a topic open for discussion, Miss Granger. Don´t fight, then the cuffs won´t hurt you. But they will not be removed until some sense has returned into you."

"Noooo!", with the little strength she still possessed, the girl ripped at the cuffs, using the weight of her body to fight against them, but it was no use.

Slowly, Severus had returned to his armchair, replaced him to the bedside and settled down.

He had barely left it for the last five days, watching her fight against the potion, the cuffs and her own madness. It hadn´t taken long for the hallucinations to return. And with them, her sense of the real world vanished.

Sometimes she believed herself to be his prisoner, sometimes she mistook him for a Death Eater and tried to play along, sometimes she thought they had uncovered her secret. She would beg him for mercy, for rescue, for death. In a way, the three seemed to be the same for her.

It was a good thing that no sound could leave his chambers, he mused now, while slowly sipping his afternoon tea, all the while examining her pale, sweating face. Otherwise, he would certainly have been arrested for torture and murder by now. She had screamed and screamed, until her voice was nothing but a hoarse whisper. Still, she had screamed on, her cries for help nothing but a mutely contorted mouth with wide open, bleeding lips.

He couldn´t give her anything against the pain, neither against the physical pain that made her body jerk and convulse like a malfunctioning machine, nor against the pain of her mind, the horrid imaged that took her sanity away. No potion made of herbs and non-magical ingredients was strong enough to reduce her symptoms, and the magical ones would kill her even sooner than the withdrawal.

He couldn´t help her. He couldn´t support her in her fight against the potion´s remnants in her blood. But he couldn´t bring himself to leave her, either. Since he had bound her to the bed, she was completely dependent on him. He couldn´t leave her alone.

So he had sat for hours by her bed, watching her, wiping the sweat from her forehead, applying healing salves to her bloodied, sore wrists that were writhing in the leather cuffs, all the time brooding on the mystery that was Hermione Granger, hoping that she would survive what seemed like living hell to him.

Sometimes, the madness would leave her for a while. He would look up from a book he was reading, and there would be her eyes, watching him, her mouth trying to form words. He would tell her what day it was and how much time had passed. Always, she would ask him in a small, frightened voice whether she had "said something". She asked for nothing else.

She seemed to fear nothing but to lose control, to disclose secrets he shouldn´t know about. So he lied to her. Didn´t tell her that she screamed for help, that her dreams told him more about her sufferings than her waking mind would ever dare.

That she had once more completely confused him. He didn´t know what to make of her any longer, how to judge her behaviour. The doubt that had seized him a week ago had grown inside him. Something wasn´t right with the pictures he had seen in her mind. They didn´t match. Not with the things her hallucinations and nightmares had revealed.

And, if he allowed himself to be honest enough to voice this thought, not with the Hermione Granger he had come to know and respect over the years. Sure, she was a student, a Gryffindor and friend to a pair of the most insufferable idiots he had ever had the misfortune to teach, but her mind was keen and bright, her braveness had surprised him more than once, and she had always shown a regard and tenderness towards other people that was rare amongst women as young as she was.

Justice and fairness, those two had seemed her driving impulses over the years. Of course he had made fun of her ridiculous little SPEW, together with most of the Slytherins, but in a shrewd, strange way, her campaign had had a point.

She wasn´t one to give up easily, whether it concerned people or more abstract goals. For instance, she had never responded to him with the hate and loathing her friends mouthed so redundantly. He had made her life a misery more than once, and still, she showed the same polite acceptance to him as to Professor Flitwick, who was one of the best beloved teachers of the school.

But that wasn´t proof for anything. Tom Riddle himself hadn´t been unlike Hermione Granger in his school years, always top grading, always obeying the school rules in minutiae, working and learning passionately. He had shown respect, even admiration to those Professors he had secretly loathed. No one had only one face. No person could be completely known by others. Hell, most people didn´t even know themselves!

There was a darkness of the soul, a lurking evil that hid in the shadows and could never be discerned from outside. A deep delight in misleading everyone around you, a feeling of superiority and power that came with deception and betrayal and could be stronger than any feeling of loyalty or friendship. Severus knew this well enough. He had tasted the sweetness of those feelings. And perhaps, Miss Granger had tasted, too, and decided to drain the cup to the last drop.

And he had seen Death Eaters writhe in the same fears that had seized Miss Granger. Wounded or dying men and women that had been monsters in life, merciless, cruel and delighting in violence. He had watched those Death Eaters suddenly cry like children, regretting everything they had done, fearing the revenge of their victims. He had seen Lucius Malfoy like that, once, after a particularly bloody revel that had taken a heavy toll on all of them. Lucius hadn´t behaved like a monster that time. Just like a tired man who had seen too much and was haunted by the horror of it.

He was sure that he couldn´t have misunderstood the feelings that had come along with those images. They had been much too clear, much too unambiguous for that. She had truly triumphed, had felt deep and sincere hate for her "friends" at school. Her lust and enjoyment of the pain had been more real and intense than anything he himself had felt for years. Her arousal had been deep and wild.

If they weren´t her true feelings, there was just one way to explain what had happened – she must have planted them deliberately. But to produce images of such sharpness, feelings of that realistic quality, she had to be a Master Occlument.

And there was no way how she could have learned that. No one had taught her, he was sure of that. Only two persons in Hogwarts possessed the ability for Legilimency and Occlumency to an extent that would allow teaching – himself and Albus Dumbledore. Albus would have told him about it, knowing well enough how important it was to keep track of the Occluments in the Wizarding World, and he himself definitely hadn´t taught her. That would have been something to remember for sure.

Which led him back to question he had been pondering for days – should he trust his Legilimens-skills, or the truth that might lie in her madness?

-

The day passed in waiting and musing, his questioning eyes only taken from her when he left for the bathroom or something to eat. He didn´t notice when night fell. He was so lost in thought that the sudden sound of Miss Granger´s voice made him flinch violently.

"It´s so dark", she whispered, lost and frightened like a little child.

"Let me light the candles", he answered quickly and rose from his chair.

"Professor!" Her eyes shot wide open and worry clouded her voice, "Did they catch you, too? I had hoped I was the only one…"

"No one´s caught us, Miss Granger", he tried to convince her though he knew that it would be in vain. They had gone through this so often that he knew the routine by heart, "You´re in my chambers, safe and sound."

"That´s what they want you to believe", she replied bitterly, "And the moment you feel safe, they get you. It´s always been like that – one moment of carelessness, and everyting´s lost."

Unwillingly, he found himself agreeing to her. _Constant vigilance_, the voice of Madeye Moody mocked him.

"They won´t get you here, Miss Granger. I promise."

"Have they done it to you, too?", she asked suddenly, her eyes fixed on his face in a mad stare, "Have they brought you into the Dark Room?"

"I… don´t know what you mean", he replied coldly, "You should sleep now, Miss Granger. You have to keep up your strength."

"They do terrible things to you in the Dark Room", she whispered while her eyes grew heavy. She fought to keep them open, but her speech became slurry from nearing sleep, "And you never know when the blow comes. That´s the worst…"

She dozed off again before she could finish her sentence. But Severus watched her for nearly half an hour before finally lighting the candles, as if he expected her to say more. Then, he sighed exhaustedly and returned to his book.

On he read for hours. His eyes grew tired and his back ached from the uncomfortable position in the armchair, but still he didn´t go to bed or transfigure his chair into something more comfortable. He had slept very little over the last days. Of course, he had to care for the girl, be prepared for her fits or nightmares.

But if he was honest with himself, he´d had to admit that he didn´t postpone sleeping for the sake of the girl alone.

For his dreams had become less then pleasant as of late. Her hallucinations, her nightmares and whimpered fears revoked memories of his own, memories he had hidden away in the deep caves of his mind. Now, they were crawling out from the shadows like monsters, trying to invade the part of his consciousness he had come to consider as his "safe zone".

_Have they brought you into the Dark Room?_, her echo whispered in his mind. He knew what she had talked about. He remembered all too well.

It had been an invention of Lucius, this "Dark Room", designed to force enemies or Death Eaters with too much of a personal opinion into submission. A cell, completely cut off from any light source, only cold, bare stone. No sound. The victims would be brought in there blindfolded, only that they couldn´t make out a difference when the cloth before their eyes was removed. Some had thought they´d gone blind, but some had understood what the room was meant to do to them.

Clever as Hermione Granger was, he was sure that she had realized its purpose immediately. The mercy of illusions didn´t come with intelligence.

They were openings in the stone walls, far above any prisoners head so they couldn´t reach them, openings from were Death Eaters could watch the prisoners, could check on their condition without the knowledge of those trembling victims. Isolation and darkness could go on for days before the first blow fell. Prisoners tended to lose all sense of time in the Dark Room.

And then, when the prisoners had given in to the darkness, they would start. Someone, hidden up there in the opening, would cast a curse that would seemingly come out of nowhere. There was no way to prepare for the pain, no way to soften the impact.

As Severus´ eyes fell asleep and his head sank to one side, he remembered standing there, in the dark, looking down on the crouching prisoner on the floor. A spell had enhanced his sight, and so he could see him, even though the dark was heavy like a blanket of black velvet. He saw the begging hands raised in a plea for mercy, saw how the fear twisted his face into something barely human.

But then, in a moment of shock and confusion, Severus realized that the prisoner down in the Dark Room wasn´t a man this time. Framed by dirty, dishevelled locks, the eyes of Hermione Granger looked up to him, piercing his very soul. She knew that he was up there.

He saw her trembling under the pain of hexes and curses that were flung on her from other openings. But she didn´t avert her eyes, her gaze locked on his face. She saw him. And she knew that it was all his fault.

He growled, his teeth bared in a grimace of hate, and pointed his wand at her. The pain struck her in the side and with a grunt she fell over. Her hands were tied together so she couldn´t prevent the fall and her face landed on the cold stones with an audible thud. He saw blood darkening her pale skin, watched the convulsive twitching of her body under the power of the Cruciatus. And he laughed, laughed on and on, the hoarse barking drowning in the sound of her anguished screams….

With a strangled cry he started and gasped for air. It had been a dream. Only a dream. His ragged breathing sounded loud in his own ears. Grey light filled the room. Morning dawned at Hogwarts and he had only dreamed. He wasn´t in the Dark Room, he was safe…

Severus´ gaze fell on Miss Granger´s feet, securely enclosed by the leather cuffs. His searching eyes travelled the still form of her body upwards when they were suddenly met by two brown, wide open eyes that were watching him nervously.

"Miss Granger", he acknowledged curtly, his voice still hoarse from sleep, "Do you know who I am?"

"A strange question, Professor", she answered, "Was it that bad?"

It took him a moment until he realized that she was talking about her illness. _Stupid_, he admonished himself, _of course she can´t know what you dreamed of! She probably didn´t even realize you had a nightmare!_

"Worse. How do you feel now?"

She frowned, thinking for a moment. "Worn", she then said, "And frail. Like an autumn leaf."

"Well, if you´re able to produce poetic metaphors, you must feel better", he replied dryly and saw her eyebrows shoot up in surprise. Clearly, she hadn´t expected a joke from him.

"Did I behave… strangely? Say weird things? Hallucinate?", she asked hesitatingly, but something in the way her hands twitched, twisted and turned in the cuffs, told him how important his answer was to her.

"You tried to kill me to get the Potion", he said, "That´s why I had to use the leather cuffs. Let me unbind you now."

"Sorry for that, Professor", she smiled weakly, but then nervousness crept back into her face, "Do you think it´s safe yet?"

He had already started a diagnosis spell on her, and for the first time in a fortnight, the results were satisfying to him.

"I have been expecting the end of withdrawal symptoms for two days now", he explained, "Your readings confirm my hypothesis that you´ve been through the worst. Hallucinations and fever should have ended now. You will, however, remain quite weak for some time. Your magic needs time to return to you, and you mustn´t overexert yourself until you´re ready."

With a quick gesture of his wand, the cuffs vanished and she sighed in relief. Slowly, she sat up and carefully massaged her wrists. Dark blue bruises and rests of dried blood showed were she had struggled against her confinement.

"You look tired", she suddenly said, catching him unprepared once more, "What did you dream of, Professor?"

Shocked by the straightforwardness of her question, his gaze met her eyes, dark with fatigue and pain, and Severus knew that she knew.

"None of your business, Miss Granger", he snarled, angry that she had witnessed enough to interpret his nightmare correctly, "Your curiosity and bad manners are not wanted here."

She flinched as if he´d hit her, and he cursed his self-defences that had prompted his harsh words.

"If you are feeling well enough for it, you should consider a little journey to the bathroom, Miss Granger. A warm bath might do you good."

She nodded silently. Moving with the frailty of an old woman, she carefully placed her feet on the floor and struggled to get up. He was by her side in a heartbeat, gently helping her up and offering her a warm robe, which she took gratefully, but with a wary expression in her face. Clearly she expected some nastiness from him, but he remained quiet while he led her over to the bathroom door.

"Can you manage?", he asked her neutrally. The idea of Professor Snape helping her into a warm bath clearly seemed to shock her, and she nodded vigorously. Still, her steps were clumsy and insecure, and she had to rest against the door frame for a moment before she managed to close the bathroom door behind her.

For a moment, he waited if she would call for help or reappear, then he walked over to her cupboard and started searching for a fresh pair of pyjamas. But a stifled cry from inside the bathroom made him whirl around and cross the room in long strides. He ripped open the door and found her lying flat on the floor, palms pressed to the tiles. She was breathing quickly and her face was almost as white as the bathroom tiles.

"What happened?", he asked and crouched down beside her, "Here, let me help you up."

"It was nothing, Professor", she refused weakly, "I just blacked out or something. Sorry to bother you, I can really manage alone!"

She averted his eyes, fighting as hard as she could to get up on her own. _She fears I will insult her again_, he realized taken aback.

But the stinging remark never came. Instead, she felt two hands under her armpits, gently helping her up and over to the side of the bathtub.

"Just sit down for a moment", he advised her while leaving the room and returning with the pyjamas after a second, "I have brought you some clothes to change into. Take your time and don´t hasten. You haven´t left the bed for nearly a week."

Pure bewilderment was written on her face as she stared at him for a moment, speechless with surprise. Then, she visibly pulled herself together and nodded.

"Thank you very much, Professor", she answered finally, "If you wouldn´t mind, you could contact Professor Dumbledore in the meantime. Now that the worst is over, I could easily move into a guestroom and not disturb you further…"

"That won´t be necessary", he cut her short and moved over to the door again, "You will stay here as long as your reconvalescence might take."

"But Professor, I thought you wanted me gone…"

"Rest, Miss Granger. Rest and heal. We will talk later", and with that, Severus Snape closed the bathroom door, leaving a very confused Hermione behind who stared after him as if she had seen a ghost.

-

A/N: Once again: Thanks for the reviews! It astonishes me how many people like this story!

If someone hasn´t received an answer to a review yet, it might be because you haven´t left your mail address, or because I simply didn´t have the time. But I thought you´d like a new chapter better than an answer to your review... But I will answer. Promise!

The next chapter will be very dark again, and angsty, but it should answer a lot of your questions. Watch out for Heart of Darkness, Part II...

And review! The Heart will be so much darker if you review!


	11. The Heart of Darkness, Part II

So finally, here it is! But I warn you, people – the R is well earned in this chapter. If violence or semi-graphic rape is too much for you, please turn away from this! The same if you´re underaged!

Disclaimer: Nothing belongs to me, except perhaps the plot. All hail J.K. Rowling!

-

The Heart of Darkness, Part II 

_Now, what the hell was that?_, Hermione asked herself as she sat on the side of the bathtub, still dazed from her fall and the following shock.

He had been nice to her! Snape, who had used every chance over the last weeks to insult her, to hurt or mortify her, had let at least a hundred good chances for his stinging remarks pass. He had tried to help her, to comfort her. Gods, he honestly seemed to care for her well being!

That wasn´t good news. Not good at all.

Fighting the impulse to doze off again, Hermione slowly got to her feet and turned on the water. Then, she started the tedious process of undressing herself.

_Gods!_, she cursed under her breath,_ if that´s how my Grandma felt in her nineties, I can understand why she was always in such a foul mood!_

Every muscle in her body ached, every movement was met with a painful protesting of her limbs. She felt dizzy already, although she had only been on her feet for a minute.

But at least she didn´t have to pretend that everything was well and walk down to Herbology with the other Gryffindors. She had done that, before, all the time praying that she wouldn´t faint in front of her friends. Being officially ill did have its advantages.

Carefully, so as not to slip and crack her head on the marble, Hermione stepped into the tub and let herself engulf by the hot, delicately scented water. Other than her Head Girl bathtub, where she had to choose the bath essence herself, this tub seemed spelled to sense its users needs. In Hermione´s case, it had obviously decided that relaxation was the most urgent need at hand.

Slowly, she felt the essences of herbs and spices soothe her cramped muscles, and breathed out a sigh of relief. Eternal thanks to whoever had invented this tub! After simply enjoying the warmth and smells for a while, she hesitatingly returned her attention to her body.

After weeks of fighting against its demands, she felt like a stranger to it. For a long time now, it had been nothing but the source of pain and suffering for her. A product she had to sell to her best advantage, a curse she had to bear.

She had lost too much weight, she realized critically as her hands scrubbed, foamed and rinsed. She´d have to eat as much as she could over the next week. Lucius liked his toys well-nourished. He wouldn´t be pleased when he saw her like this.

She dipped her head under the water to wet her hair, then chose a shampoo and started massaging her scalp while her thoughts returned to Snape´s mysterious behaviour.

If he had stopped treating her like an abomination, it meant that something had changed his opinion of her. She seriously doubted that the Headmaster, Professor McGonagall or Draco could have produced this change of heart, not with a man as stubborn and pig-headed as Snape was.

Which meant that something must have happened during the last week, something drastic enough to turn his open loathing into insecure politeness. Damn! She must have slipped something!

Every time she had surfaced from the madness of her dreams, she had asked him about her behaviour, about what she had said. His answers always had calmed her and she had hoped that, somehow, she had prevented herself from spilling too much information. But he had been a spy for years, handling and twisting dangerous information when she wasn´t even born, for goodness sake! She couldn´t believe a word he said. He was as good in the game as she was, perhaps even better.

But if he doubted the pictures from her mind… She lifted her hands to her eyes and saw that they were shaking badly. She had to be even more careful now than before. While he had believed to know her motives, to see through her masks, she had been quite safe with him, although not very comfortable. But if Snape now suspected that there was more behind her actions than he had assumed, he would go to great length to find out. And that she couldn´t allow.

_He must never know_, she swore to herself, shame reddening her cheeks at the thought of Snape finding out… , _I mustn´t let my guard down! I must plan carefully._

But the planning wouldn´t work. Her mind was a turmoil of thoughts and fears, memories and images, and all she could do not to panic was concentrating on her hair, washing it two, three times until all the sweat and dirt was gone from it and she had calmed down enough to climb out of the bathtub and dry herself with one of the fluffy towels.

She´d have loved to apply a shaving charm to her legs and armpits, or to magically dry her hair, but her wand was still in the possession of Snape, and she didn´t dare to try wandless magic so soon.

The fresh cotton of the pyjamas felt wonderful on her skin, but she was shaking with weariness when she opened the bathroom door and stepped back into her room.

Someone had changed her bed linen and placed a tray of food on the bedside locker. The big windows were wide open and the fresh air caressed her face. A soft smile lighted her face as she climbed back into bed and arranged the cover around her. In a way, it felt still good to be alive.

The tray held a bowl of creamy soup and crispy, warm bread. She only realized how hungry she had been when nothing was left of her meal but a few crumbs. Carefully, she returned the tray to the bedside locker and stretched out in her bed.

_I should send an owl to Draco_, she mused while her eyes fell shut against her will, _ find out what happened while I was out cold…_

But before she could even finish her thought, sleep had dragged her into its deep, dark belly. For once, there were no nightmares waiting for her there, but quiet, peace and resting.

-

She awoke slowly, her thoughts drifting directionless along the events of the last weeks. This was just a breather, a moment of quiet before the storm. But she had to be prepared to rejoin the hunt sooner or later.

Slowly she opened her eyes, enjoying that she was warm, full and without pain. But when her eyes fell on the chair by her bedside, her body stiffened to alertness. Snape was sitting in his armchair, reading a stack of papers and occasionally marking a line with his flowing, red-inked handwriting. No doubt one or the other student would burst into tears over those comments.

She felt vulnerable and naked when she realized that he had been watching her sleep.

Hermione must have made a noise without realizing, for suddenly his head rose from the paper and his eyes locked with hers, unguarded and opened as he hadn´t expected her to be awake. What she saw in those dark orbs made her shudder. Concern, worry and doubt. He clearly was suspecting something.

"How do you feel, Miss Granger?", he asked quietly, and his voice held nothing of his normal malice, "You slept well I trust."

"Very much so, Professor", she replied levelly, "I certainly feel much better. It won´t be necessary to watch over me any longer."

He didn´t react to her implicit demand, but silently left the room and returned after a moment with another tray that again held soup, bread and tea.

"You should eat as much as you can manage", he advised her, "You lost weight over the last fortnight."

"I noticed that much", she answered, her eyes fixed on the meal. Gods, she was hungry!

He let her clean her bowl without commenting on her appetite or eating habits. Another bad sign, but there was nothing she could do. She could hardly ask him to insult her a bit, as it made her feel better, could she?

Silence filled the room as he rid her of the tray and she studiously avoided his eyes, watching her folded hands instead.

"I have brought you something to read", he finally announced, and her head shot up in surprise, "You should spend another day in bed before you may try to stay up longer. I thought you might like to join me for dinner tomorrow evening in my library. You could spend the day there. It must bore you to see nothing but this room."

"The room is just fine", she answered cautiously, but as she saw how he stiffened with the decline of his proposal, she added quickly, "But I will join you tomorrow. Thank you very much for offering."

"It is nothing, Miss Granger. Call me if you need anything. I will be in earshot."

Only after he had left the room and closed the door she thought of looking at the book he had left her. It was a slim, leather bound volume. "The Art of War, by Sun Tse", the title read.

Despite her intentions, the book captured her. Sun Tse must have been a military genius of his time, she mused as she read his advice for generals and Princes, written down nearly two and a half millennia before she had been born.

Concerning warfare, he seemed as pragmatic as she had become over the last few months, favouring battles that were won without a sword drawn and wars of the mind rather than those fought with armies. But it was the last chapter of his "Art" that she read over and over again, and it was as if through the words of this old Chinese, Severus Snape spoke to her.

"_Your surviving spy must be a man of outstanding intellect but with the outer appearance of a fool, of shabby looks, but with an iron will. He must be energetic, resistant, strong and courageous: well used to all sorts of dirty work, able to bear hunger and cold and willing to pile shame and disgrace on himself."_

She smirked. No wonder this book appealed to her Potions Professor. But Sun Tse had considered his spies important enough to make them the main key to every war. Despised and cast out from human society, they fought in the shadows to protect this very society. The secrets, the shadows and the bitterness that turned them older than their years – in a strange, twisted way, she realized, she and her Professor weren´t different at all.

"_Therefore, the enlightened leader and the wise general will use the most intelligent of their army as spies and achieve extraordinary successes this way."_

_- _

Snape returned at dinner time, once again carrying a tray with a variety of dishes. But as she thanked him and examined her meal, she found her wand lying beside her plate.

Surprised and not knowing what to make of it, she looked up to the still standing man.

"Isn´t it too soon?", she asked him, not phrasing the question that was uppermost in her mind: _Why do you trust me enough to hand me my wand?_ He probably had expected that question from her, too, but she didn´t want to enter that conversation, not if she could help it.

"Using magic should now be safe for you", he answered and settled down in the armchair she had come to think of as his, "But start slowly and be careful as you don´t know the effects it will have in the beginning. Eat first, though. You need to build up your strength."

She nodded mutely and turned to her meal, ignoring her wand completely as she didn´t want to show him how much it mattered to her. With the power of her wand and the magic restored to her, freedom seemed much nearer than before. Perhaps she even could get out of here unharmed, with all her secrets well kept.

When she had finished, she waited for him to leave again, but he made no move to rise or take the tray from her. Obviously, he wanted to watch her effort, and so she slowly, reverently picked up her wand and softly stroked the polished surface with her fingers.

"Try to lighten that candle over there", Snape advised her.

_It´s not as if I´ve never used a wand, Professor_, she thought angrily, but decided to keep her thoughts to herself. Instead, she pointed the slender piece of wood towards the candle and murmured a spell.

Immediately, a white hot pain shot through her head, causing her to let go of the wand and groan in agony. Snape was by her side in a heartbeat.

"Miss Granger", he asked concernedly, "What is the matter?"

She fought the tears that wanted to fill her eyes in reaction to the pain, and when she looked up at him, her face was under control.

"Nothing", she replied weakly, "Just a bit of pain. It was unexpected. I´m sorry, Professor."

"Well, now we know you have to start even smaller", he commented, taking up the tray from her lap and moving over to the door, "Take your time, Miss Granger. And don´t overexert yourself. I shall see you in the morning."

"Thank you, Professor", she called after him, "and good night to you."

-

Despite his warning, she practiced well into the night, until she could manage or even ignore the pain. She fell asleep with her hand curled around the dark wood of her wand, and when she woke in the morning, it was the very first thing she checked for.

She ate the breakfast that was waiting for her on her desk, took a shower and was delighted to find her magic strong enough again to apply drying and shaving charms to her body. She dressed into cotton trousers and a dark red shirt and felt human again for the first time in days.

Spending the day with working on her spells and catching up on schoolwork, she was surprised how fast the evening had come. As the huge clock in the library stroke seven, she descended the winding staircase and found an opulent meal and a fully robed Professor Snape waiting for her.

"You look much better today, Miss Granger", he commented in the silkiest of voices as he walked her over to the table and offered her a seat, "Has your magic returned?"

"At least part of it", she answered, thankful that he had opened conversation on safe grounds, "I haven´t tried anything big yet, but the basic spells do not pose problems anymore."

"You should give yourself time. All should return to you in a few days."

"I will", she answered truthfully, "And thank you for your support."

"Think nothing of it."

An uneasy silence settled on them as they concentrated on their meal. Finally, Hermione looked up to see him watching her. There was something indefinable in his eyes, a kind of insecure curiosity that made her nervous.

"So, tell me, Professor, is there anything new concerning Order business", she asked in an attempt to lighten the mood.

"Apart from the usual bickering and hierarchical disputes you mean?", the superior expression in his face made her smile, "Quite a lot, actually. The false information we planted in the ministry has finally born fruit. We know now that Fudge is keeping key knowledge from us, deliberately. Of course, there were wild discussions what to do and much ado about nothing, really, but in the end, they all agreed that listening spells should be placed in the Minister´s office."

"Finally!", Hermione said, deeply satisfied, "I had feared it would take them another lifetime to decide!"

"You knew about this?", Snape asked, sounding genuinely surprised. He had always considered the quarrel between Fudge and the Order as information only available to the Inner Circle.

"Let´s just say I found out about Fudge´s false play some months ago", she answered cryptically, "I talked to the Headmaster and he wanted to remove Fudge, but I convinced him that it is better to have an idiot who can be controlled as Minister than an unknown risk."

"My advice to Albus exactly", Snape commented slowly. Then, he filled her glass with deep red wine and offered it to her.

"Thank you very much, Professor", she declined, "But I don´t drink. It´s too…"

"Risky for a spy, I know, Miss Granger", he interrupted her, his velvety voice caressing her, "Just this once, though, I think you can make an exception. It will help you to relax, and relax is what you must do to get better soon."

Still she hesitated, but when his slender fingers presented the glass to her without making a move to withdraw, she finally took it and tasted the ruby liquid. She had never drunk a wine that delicious. It tasted like… his voice, she thought, but quickly banished the thought from her mind.

"What type of listening spell would you recommend, then?", Snape asked while casually refilling her glass from the crystal decanter. She hadn´t even noticed that she had emptied it.

"It should be a dormant spell, I think", she answered and returned to her meal, "activated by certain key words. We could make sure that…"

They talked on, discussing possible spell variations that Severus might present to the Order, and then turned to Potions and the research work he had been doing with Remus Lupin.

Hermione felt surprisingly at ease with her brooding Professor. He seemed to have completely abandoned his sneering arrogance, treating her as an equal and regarding her comments and proposals with the same serious care he might apply to a scientific article or a new experiment. She found that talking to him came quite natural to her. He made her laugh, and listened attentively, and the wine and the exquisite meal caused a warmth in her belly that spread through her whole body, until she was relaxed, satisfied and comfortable all over.

Finally, silence fell between them once again, but not the uncomfortable silence of earlier.

"So tell me, Miss Granger", Snape finally asked in a light tone, betraying nothing of his intention, "What do you know about Occlumency?"

For one seemingly endless moment, she could feel nothing but admiration as she stared at him wide eyed. Gods, she would never get that good! The subtlety this man was capable of mesmerized her. He had planned all this, putting her at ease, relaxing her, offering her wine. She never drank wine! And now, that her defences were down, he triggered the trap. 

Then, panic kicked in and her survival reflexes took over. Her face turned from shocked to innocent so fast that he wouldn´t have noticed her first reaction had he not looked for it carefully.

„Not much, Professor", she replied as lightly as he, „Harry told me something about it in our fifth year, when you were teaching him. Plus I have done some additional reading for a project some time ago, but there´s not too much in the library about it, I´m afraid. Why, do you consider using it on the Minister?"

"You know that you can trust me, Miss Granger, don´t you? I would never betray your secrets", he asked, and something in his voice made her wish to open up to him with all her heart, to tell him everything, to let him rescue her… but she had seen through his tricks now. No. She couldn´t trust him.

"Of course I trust you, Professor, though I don´t see how Occlumency can help us with our Ministry problem", she answered neutrally and rose from her chair, "But I´d better go to bed now. I feel quite tired."

With one single step, he had crossed the distance between them and was towering over her, his hand fixed on her shoulder. He knew! Gods, he knew!

"I know that you´re lyinig, Miss Granger", he said slowly, and the velvety whisper sent shudders of fear down her spine. "So why don´t we stop playing this little game and talk some truth instead?"

"I don´t know what you´re talking about, Professor", she stammered, panic now audible in her voice, "What does Occlumency have to do with…"

"Enough! Why are you lying, girl? What are you hiding?"

"Nothing! Please, sir, I don´t…"

"Then why haven´t you told me about the things Lucius Malfoy does to you? Why don´t you tell me something about the Dark Room, Miss Granger? Why it frightens you so much that you begged me to kill you before they could get you? Tell me of the games they are playing with you when the Dark Lord is in one of his fouler moods!"

Something snapped in the girl´s face, her eyes turning into those of a wild animal. She tore away from him, ripping her sleeve and stumbling forward with the force of her movement. Racing over to one of the windows, she ripped it open. She seemed willing to jump from it, but Severus was faster. He grabbed her, swung her around towards him and fixed her pale, sweating face in both his hands.

"What are you doing?", she screamed, fear shaking her voice, "Don´t! I can´t…not now!" 

But he had to know!

The moment he entered her mind again, he knew that she hadn´t even tried to defend herself the last time. But now she put all her strength in the wall that separated her thoughts from his, and he had to fight her every step of the way. He wasn´t sure if he would have managed her in a state of health and energy, but she couldn´t hide her weaknesses from him. He heard her moan in frustration and pain as he clawed at her mindwall, breaking through it with sheer, brutal force.

But what he found behind this wall of her mind were just the same images he had seen two weeks ago. He cringed under the knowledge of what was to come, and somewhere, far away, he heard Miss Granger mouthing words, begging and pleading for him to stop as she had done the day her hallucinations had started.

_A stunning looking Hermione in a black evening dress made only to present her breasts in a better light. Men turning to watch her go, women eyeing her jealously. Draco Malfoy at her side. _

_Hermione holding a glass of dark red wine, sipping from it, her eyes glowing under the black night of her lashes. Suddenly, Lucius Malfoy standing before her. _

"_Well well, what does a little mudblood on a ball like this?"_

"_Waiting for you, Mr. Malfoy", wetting her lips with the dark wine and leaning slightly towards him._

"_What should I want with a girl like you?"_

"_There are many uses for a mudblood, Lucius, and many of them can be enjoyable for both sides."_

_Lucius smiling, and a feeling of… lust surging through her groins. He lead her to a chamber and she couldn´t await his hands on her body. _

_Her groaning, as he ripped open the top of her dress…_

A double defence, he realized, astonished at her expertise. She had combined a mental wall with a second wall of false images that would satisfy any Occlument with their realness. No one would look further than that.

_Hermione kneeling in front of Voldemort, her forehead touching the ground._

"_I know that I am but a low muggleborn, Mylord, but even someone like me can be of service to a great one. I know things valuable for you, I am the best friend of Potter and gaining Dumbledore´s trust. I only wish to serve."_

_Rising to the dark Lord´s beckoning and feeling power, triumph and gratitude. She had joined his rank. She was a Death Eater. She was serving the mightiest on earth. _

_Hermione standing before Voldemort. "He is a dirty traitor, Mylord, nothing more. He has betrayed you to the old fool ever since you returned!" Gleeful pride inside her. She had shown the old bat his place. She was a pet to the master, queen of the world that was to come._

"_I can give you Potter, Master. It needs only a little time and a plan, and I will hand the little brat over to you", and the mighty claws of the Dark Lord would smash him, and she would watch._

He tried to push through the dancing images that surrounded him, taunted and mocked him, but it was useless. They were perfectly crafted, leaving no opening, no room to enter the mind that was hidden by them. Helplessly, he had to watch them unfolding in front of him.

_Hermione kneeling once more. "Undress", the Dark Lord ordered her, and she obeyed, shrugging of her robes and standing in white nakedness before the inner circle of the Death Eaters._

"_Everything for you, Master". She believed it. She would serve until her death. _

_The dark shapes of Death Eaters closing in on her, hitting and kicking her. Whipping her. _

"_This is what a mudblood gets if she wants to enter our circle."_

_Hermione screaming in pleasure, shivering with lust and begging for more._

"_I thank you for the pain, Mylord! Everything for you, Master!"_

He felt her body trembling under his hard grip. There was no way to reach behind these images. But he knew they were false now! He knew there had to be more to it! With all the power his finely crafted mind possessed, he rammed the barrier of imaged, again and again, hearing her cry out in anguish and pain, and finally, he felt the wall crumbling below his violent blows.

_Hermione, writhing and moaning under the naked body of Lucius Malfoy, bitting and scratching him, drawing blood._

_Hermione crying out as Lucius drove into her, slamming her head against a cold stone wall. _

_Her eyes wide open below the pumping body, her pupils nearly black, filled with lust, triumph, pain, the need for blood…_

There was an opening! He could see it now – deep down within her pupils, a light flickered, a hint of something more, a tiny entrance to her soul. With the last of his strength, he pushed through, feeling himself drawn into the depth of her eyes.

She screamed, her hands ripping at him at him, trying to push him away with all the power the possessed, but he held on, nearly crushing her face below his fingers, and drove deeper into her mind. Deeper. And deeper.

And there, in the darkness of her heart, he found the horror.

_He wanted to meet her again, barely a day after their last … activities. Apparating to the little hut he used as a meeting place, she had barely become aware of her surroundings when he was over her, taking her wand, warding the room and ripping her blouse open in a heart beat. He didn´t bother to drag her over to the bed. Gripping her hair and forcing her down onto her knees, he thrust his hot, pulsing cock into her mouth. She choked, but managed to change the sound into a lustful moan before it left her mouth. You can do this, Hermione, he heard her voice chanting in her head, you will survive this. Breathe. Lick. Suck. Moan! Hate burned inside her, but when he dragged her up and pressed her against the cold stone wall, her skirt up to her hips, even hate succumbed under the mountain of pain and fear. She closed her eyes and tried to think of something else, of the warm fire in the Common Room, of Crookshanks, purring in her lap, of the Great Hall´s beautiful ceiling, while she screamed with false lust and called his name, but he wouldn´t let her escape that way. And every ripping thrust drove the shame deeper into her heart. _

"_You are a mudblood whore, Granger, and you´ll never be more." She was kneeling before a full robed Death Eater, naked and shivering, her trembling body covered with bleeding wounds, "You´re not worth the dirt under our shoes, do you know that? But I´ll be generous, mudblood. Lick my boots – perhaps they will add some worth to your life. Lick them!" Boots, covered in the blood of his last victim. Do what must be done! Gods, I wish he´d just use Cruciatus! And she lowered her head over his boots and licked the salty blood. "I thank you, my Lord!", she whispered diligently and heard the raucous laughter of the Inner Circle, "Thank you for the pain!" Then a rough kick in her side sent her lying on the ground, with Death Eaters closing in around her. He had broken a rib, but he would break much more before the night was over. _

Severus had seen enough. … He tried to pull back. Her body had long ago gone limp in his hands, and only the images and feelings that flooded his mind told him that she hadn´t fainted yet. But to his horror he found that he couldn´t leave her mind, that the walls he had overcome now kept him inside her mind, and before he could break the contact, before he could push her away and end their torture, new scenes stormed in on him, and he was lost again amidst the horrors that were her memories.

"_Gods no!", she sobbed as the white searing pain that was Lucius filled her belly. She had been bleeding for weeks now, and was afraid that the pain would kill her before time. Suddenly, strong fingers tightened around her throat. She couldn´t breathe! Panic welled up in her, and then she heard Lucius´ voice whispering in her ear. "What did you say, mudblood whore?" "I said don´t stop, Lucius, don´t stop!", she choked, thinking: He would kill her now, and peace filled her at this thought. But then he was over her again, punching into her, hitting and biting her, ripping open the tender skin of her breasts. "Yes, give it to me, yes", she screamed, while tears where wetting her face, but it was dark, and he couldn´t notice, so she let them fall. No peace tonight, not for a mudblood whore._

_Hermione sitting on her bed, nursing a deep gash in her thigh, crying soundlessly from the pain. So exhausted that she couldn´t even sleep anymore. Nightmares haunted her and it was too risky to steal more of the Dreamless Sleep Potion. And lessons would start soon… But no one must notice! No one must notice! _

Frantically, he struggled against her defences that had become his cage. He had to get out! He couldn´t bear this any longer! For the first time in years, panic and fear made him unable to think and he fought blindly, just to get away from the pain, the horror, the shame that pulsed through her. But the next image made him freeze in shock.

_His own face, towering over her, while his hands clasped her sleeves and forced her to meet his eyes. His presence in her mind, forcing her to relive the images she had planted in protection of the truth. He will hate me now, he thought with her and felt the hot pain of shame and humiliation course through his veins, he will see me as the whore that I am!_

_His eyes, dark with loathing and disgust as he led her go, pushed her away from him like something dirty and infested. I will do what must be done! I will do what must be done! Her chant in his ears, and then the feeling of the mask freezing her features, the cold numbness of control as he listened to his voice, insulting her and felt something breaking inside her, some warmth that was left suddenly vanish, some tiny, flickering hope go out. _

_He had done it. He had done to her what no Death Eater had managed before. She was dead now. She could as well stop breathing and let the darkness take her. And a memory filled his mind, even stronger than the ones before, of the silhouette of a man, crouching on the flow in darkness, a frightened face, white from the blood loss, and a voice, shaking with fear, calling her name…_

Suddenly, he felt himself seized and hurled out of her mind with a power three times stronger than his own. Something hard stopped his fall and when he opened his eyes he found himself lying half sprawled in an armchair in his library. Nothing had changed in the room. But everything had changed inside him. Wild eyes searching frantically for the girl, he found her lying on the floor in a lifeless heap of clothes, hair and limbs. Her shoulders were twitching wildly, and her hoarse, shallow breath mixed with his.

Gods, what had he done! He had wanted nothing more than a glimpse into her true intentions, to finally know where she stood. Instead, he had pried on her, ravaged her thoughts and awoken memories too painful to be shared with others!

That she could feel all this and still go on with her task, that she could function as a normal being and act the loyal girl with those images in her mind!

How was she bearing this? He had never felt a person hurt that much and still live.

His head was blank. He tried of something to say, of anything to do that would make her feel better, but where normally the thoughts would dance inside his head, he could see nothing but those horrid images now, could hear nothing but her screams, feel nothing but her fear and shame.

But she wouldn´t move. She wouldn´t look up to him or react to anything around her. So he went over, and slowly, tentatively, placed a hand on her meagre shoulder.

"Don´t touch me", she hissed, stumbling to her feet and leaning weakly against the back of armchair, "How dare you touch me after what you did to me?"

"I´m sorry, Miss Granger, I…"

"There is no excuse for what you did just now, _Professor_", she screamed, turning the title into an insult that hit him like a fist in the stomach, "You are no better then they. They may have raped my body, but you raped my mind just now!"

"I know this doesn´t… I would never have done it if…But I had to know, Miss Granger, I had to know!", his voice rose in desperate plea for understanding, while he knew that she couldn´t forgive him, couldn´t show understanding for what he had done. He didn´t deserve it. Gods, she wasn´t the monster – it was him!

"So the world can return to normal again, now that Severus Snape has proven his superiority to a mudblood student", she said bitterly, cold radiating from her eyes, "I do hope it was worth it, Professor! Does it make you happy, to know that I am not as strong as you, that they have punished me sufficiently for daring to take over your place? Or do you want to go on breaking into my mind as if I was a cheap copy of Gringotts? Perhaps you´d like to fuck me, too, so that you really know me from inside out?"

She advanced towards him, her eyes burning with fury, and ripped open her pyjamas top. He backed away instinctively in shame and fear, "Miss Granger, please!"

"Oh, I see", she yelled, tears rolling down her face and lending to her eyes an unnatural brightness, "Not after what you´ve seen, Professor? Certainly you wouldn´t want to touch a whore like me, eh? Does it revolt you? Well, I´m certainly revolted by myself. I hope you draw some satisfaction from that!"

He could only stare at her, breathless, too shocked to think of anything but the incredible pain that shone in her face.

"I could kill you for this!", she whispered, her voice shaking as badly as her whole, trembling frame, "it was bad enough to bear when nobody knew, but now… Every time Lucius touches me, I will feel your eyes on me, I will know that you know…"

Suddenly, as if the shock of what had taken place finally caught up with her, Hermione´s face lost all colour and she choked, pressing her hand to the mouth to prevent herself from retching. He made a small, feeble move towards her, to support her shivering body, but she evaded his touch and fled from the room, up the winding staircase. He could hear her door slam shut behind her.

Then, there was only silence.

-

A/N: Hello again, everybody! This was a very hard chapter to write and it took me longer than I expected. I´m still not absolutely happy about it, but I couldn´t bear letting you wait any longer.

So here it is, for all of you to comment on, criticize or enjoy… Tell me if you like it and if all this is going into the right direction. I´m a bit unsure about it at the moment.

Next update should take some time, unless you somehow persuade me to work faster than I planned ;-)

Oh, and remember to leave your full e-mail address if you want to be sure that an answer from me reaches you.

All the best, Kayly


	12. Breaking Apart

Breaking Apart

Releasing one long, shuddering breath, Severus stumbled over to the couch and let himself collapse onto the soft, cool leather.

He lifted his right hand and saw that it was trembling, pinched the bridge of his nose, and then, when that didn´t seem to help, rubbed his face vigorously with both hands to return some sort of sensation or feeling to it.

He was numb with shock. For the first time in many years, Severus Snape was frozen. He couldn´t think. He couldn´t act. And he couldn´t feel. All his being was fixed on one sentence, reverberating in his mind again and again: "You raped my mind just now!"

_You are a monster, Severus! _

Shame and guilt welled up in him, making it nearly impossible to breathe. He choked on self-disgust as he remembered her writhing body under his hands, her pleas to spare her, to let her be, and how he had broken down all walls of defence, just out of a need to know. There had been no respect in what he had done, no humanity. He had taken everything from her, and left her nothing.

_A monster!_

She was a human being, for goodness sake! Barely a woman, and his student. He had promised her protection and care, and had then tricked her into a situation with no way out.

He shuddered as he remembered the bitterness in her voice, the utter resignation. Remembered her shame at what she had done, her shame at having it revealed.

"_Does it make you happy, to know that I am not as strong as you, that they have punished me sufficiently for daring to take over your place?_

How could she believe that he would ever think like this? That he would consider her weak, or wish her punishment? _But if you think it through, it fits perfectly with Snape the bastard, doesn´t it?_, he thought bitterly, and again, he saw himself towering over her, fury and loathing in his eyes, spitting insults into her face…

No wonder she believed him capable of such arrogance, such hate. Enough of it to rejoice in the downfall of his most brilliant student? But he had never told her how much he admired her intelligence, how proud he was of her academic achievements. He had never told her how brave he thought her.

And now she was hiding in her room, hiding from him. Probably crying her heart out. Probably doing worse.

And it was all his fault.

He tried to will himself up, to move, up the stairs and into her room, but he found that he couldn´t. He just couldn´t face her. How to handle her after what he´d seen, after what he´d done?

He feared what he would find when he´d look for her. The hate in her face, the utter despair had been too much to bear. He couldn´t endure seeing that expression in her eyes again.

Soft steps on the stairs roused him from his bitter thoughts. Hermione Granger descended the stairs, and he braced himself against what he would see.

But it was not the sight he had expected. For instead of a broken, panicky girl, what entered his library with purposeful stride was a queen. An ice queen.

She held her head high, shoulders straight and posture perfect.

From the wetness of her hair he could see that she had taken a shower. She had also changed into trousers, top and full robes, as if to distance herself from the casual atmosphere they had shared not an hour ago.

Never had he seen her that icy cold, and although he knew by now that this was nothing but a desperate mask, put on to fool the world, he shuddered. She didn´t look… human anymore, but like something carved from marble and diamonds, too hard to be touched. Too hard and eternal to feel the pain.

She wasn´t here anymore, he realized in that moment. She had banished the last shreds of emotion, of what made her human, far away to some hiding place that no one could ever reach, and was now nothing more but a puppet, moving at her own will, tool and mistress at the same time.

He sprang up from the couch and moved towards her, insecure and clumsy like a schoolboy. She didn´t look at him, her eyes taking in everything in the room but him. He wanted to apologize, to whisper excuses, when her voice, utterly calm and controlled, stopped him in his tracks.

"I have to apologize for my earlier behaviour, Professor Snape", she announced, absolutely nothing moving in her face.

"What…", he couldn´t believe his ears. _She_ was apologizing to him? Had she gone mad?

"My aggressiveness was uncalled for. You only did what you thought was necessary. This certainly isn't something to feel guilty for. I overreacted."

"Miss Granger, what are you talking about?", he asked, confusion once more threatening to drown him, "I know as well as you that my behaviour was inexcusable! But all I ask is that you let me explain, that you give me a chance to…"

"I will not listen to your explanations", she interrupted him, "You did what must be done. That´s all I need to know. All I want to know."

_I´ll do what must be done_, her voice whispered in his ears. Did she consider his actions nothing but a necessary evil? Did she believe this part of the silent war, the game that spies had to play with their life as the stake? Did she think that she had lost against him and that she had to accept her defeat?

"And now, Professor Snape, I´d like to leave."

He couldn´t let her go like this! But what could he do that she wouldn´t consider a further attack on her defences? How the hell could he show her that her cared? That he regretted? Severus had never been very good at apologies, but it wasn´t hard for him to see his guilt now. Nor to admit it.

"I´m so sorry, Miss Granger. I know I terribly wronged you, but I…"

Still, her voice held no emotion but a hint of cold, cruel amusement.

"Stop whining, Professor. We´re in a war. You did what you had to. Casualties are to be expected. But perhaps you should remember that you mustn´t destroy the weapons of your own side."

_A weapon? _ She was no weapon, for goodness sake, she was his student, a girl that had been caught up in a war too big for herself, even if she fought bravely. Why hadn´t she let Dumbledore, Minerva or himself help her? Why had she subjected herself to his cruelness, had acted as if he was right to treat her like a…

Severus felt as if his head would burst any moment. Throbbing pain filled his mind and made it impossible to think. He felt like crying with the injustice of it all.

"Why didn´t you tell me?", he whispered, his voice breaking, "Why did you let me believe you were doing this willingly, enjoying it? Gods, I would never have…"

"My pride was the only thing left, Professor. You know that feeling, don´t you?"

"Yes", the realization of what he had taken from her burned in his throat, "and I wish I had…", he stopped. He didn´t know what he wished any longer. That he had never found out? That she hadn´t been placed under his care? That the war had never started?

"It changes nothing", she answered coldly after a while, "Nothing at all."

"But how can you say that?", he yelled, trying to break her façade of deadly calm, not knowing how else to express the remorse he felt. _What have you done to me, girl?_, he thought, _What have you caused me to do?_, "I believed you a whore, a perverted monster when all the time you…"

"But I am a whore, Professor", her face expressionless, she looked up to him as if teaching him a lesson, as if he was a mumbling idiot who hadn´t gotten the point yet, "I still sell my body for information, I still pretend to enjoy what they do. I agree to their games. Whether I delight in it or not doesn´t change the facts. I _am _ the perverted monster you believed me to be, so stop making a fuss over this."

Horror shook his body as the impact of her words hit him. Suddenly, it all made sense. A terrible sense. He remembered the feelings he had read in her mind when he had called her a whore that first, fated time in this very library. Her feelings of shame and the tiny, flickering light in her body that had gone out.

She hadn´t felt ashamed of the images he had seen or the things she had done. She had been deeply ashamed that he _had found out_. That he finally knew her for what she really was. And she had accepted his judgment, not to keep her secrets hidden, but because she believed it true. _Filthy whore_.

"You can´t really believe this!"

"I can´t afford illusions, Professor", she answered tiredly, "I am no innocent young princess waiting for her hero on a white horse. I´ve mingled with the devils and that makes me a devil. I will never get clean and white and happy again. I accept that. And so should you."

He understood all too well. For years, guilt and shame had poisoned his days and nights, horror at the deeds he had committed. It hadn´t changed the feelings a bit to know that all he had done had been done for the sake of the Order, that all his victims had died less painfully than under the hands of other Death Eaters. Still he had known that he was a murderer, and that, while he was serving the Light, he could never belong to it for the things he had done.

But to hear the same sentiments spoken from lips so young, to see the resigned belief in her eyes that he had felt for all the years was different. He couldn´t let her continue on the long way that had let him into the darkness. He couldn´t let her die inside as he had died, every night a bit more, until he had been a shell of a man, a shadow of the darkest night.

"This is nonsense, Miss Granger! You are a victim! You…"

"I went there willingly", she cut in, her voice like steel, "I seduced Lucius, not the other way round. I wasn´t kidnapped and raped, I invited them to do it. And although I have the choice to flee and hide, I will go back there and continue inviting them. If that doesn´t make me a whore, I don´t know what does. Will you let me leave now?"

"But you don´t have to do this anymore! I will help you, Miss Granger, I will talk to the Headmaster and explain everything…"

"I don´t need your bloody help, Professor", she said harshly, "I managed quite well on my own before you started meddling, thank you very much. And I won´t allow you to screw up my plans", emotion crept in her voice, cold anger at his impertinence, and weariness…

"You mustn´t go back there, Miss Granger", he stated, and for the first time since she had reentered his library, his voice was calm. There was no way for him to gain forgiveness from her, no way to take back the hurt he had caused her.

But there was a way for him to make sure that her life didn´t end like this. There was a way he could rescue her, even if she didn´t want to be rescued by him. Even if it meant to hurt her once more, to use the fateful knowledge he had gained against her.

"I can´t allow you to do this any longer. Now that I know…"

"I already told you. Nothing has changed. Not for me. And I certainly won´t risk the outcome of this war to spare your feelings", she spat, sarcasm hitting him like a slap in the face.

"Not my feelings, Miss Granger. Spare yourself", he tried to argue, "You´re so young still, there´s so much you could do with your life! Don´t throw it away…"

"Do you ask me to place my life above that of the poor muggle girls and boys that are tortured just now? Above that of my fellow Gryffindors? Your Slytherins? They all might die if this war rages on! What about Draco? About Harry and Ron? Ginny? They all suffered so much already. They have seen too much for their age. And if I can stop it all, if I can prevent the final battle, do you really expect me to sit tight and enjoy my _life_?"

It was funny, he thought, in a perverted, dark kind of way. He could have spoken these words along with her, could have made the plea instead of her. She mirrored his own thoughts, his own believes so perfectly. And he perfectly knew what lay ahead of her on this path of saving the world.

The darkness, the fear, the madness. And, finally, the resignation.

He wouldn´t let it happen to her, now that he knew the pleasures of life again, now that he had finally realized what he had given up for all those long, lonely years. It was a great step, Severus realized now, that he was finally able to mourn for the life that had been lost to him. Could he remind her of what she would lose?

"But what about you, Miss Granger? Haven´t you suffered too much as well?"

Their eyes locked at that moment, and gazing into the hazelnut deep, Severus saw… nothing.

"I am dead already, Professor", she said, and there was no drama in her voice, no bitterness. It was a fact for her, nothing more, "My body still moves, but there is nothing left inside me that could go on."

"I don´t believe you", he whispered, remembering the fire in her eyes and voice only hours ago, "I know that there is something left, and I won´t allow you to kill it! I _will_ convince Albus to protect you, even if I have to tell him everything!"

"If you tell the Headmaster one word of your "Legilimens session" with me, I will leave Hogwarts and never come back, Professor. Be assured of this. If I find out that you informed him about it, neither you nor anybody else from this school will ever see me again. And believe me, I _will find out!_"

He didn´t doubt it. He would never again doubt her abilities. But he wasn´t one to give up so easily, either.

"Then I will find another way to convince him, Miss Granger. You stay here!", he commanded.

Not caring that she could watch him, he stormed over to the library´s mantelpiece and withdrew some floo powder from his pocket. He didn´t even stop to consider that he was betraying his secret floo connection to her, but barked "Headmaster´s office" into the fireplace and stepped through.

He didn´t turn around to watch the strange expression in her face as she watched him leave.

A/N: Hi, everybody!

I deeply apologize for the long delay, but writer´s block and the difficulties of this chapter were too much to overcome for a time. Alas, the way of the muses...

I very much hope you all like this chapter, and I´m really in love with all your reviews! You make me so proud and happy! I promise the next update won´t take nearly as long...

One last question before you may click the little review button - do you want a quick reunion of the two, or should I let Hermione suffer for a bit longer (and poor Snape will suffer terribly, too!). i will need at least one chapter until they start talking again, but there are enough ideas buzzing around in  
my head for two more chapters of hate and suffering (evil little me, mwahaha!).

Tell me what you think, and how you want this to develop!

All the best, Kayly Silverstorm


	13. Making the Gestures of Life

Making the gestures of life

Two hours after Snape had left her standing alone in his library, Hermione entered her Head Girl´s room for the first time in weeks. Carefully, she sat the school bag that she had carried herself to the side of her desk and then lowered herself into one of the arm chairs over by the fire.

She would have flooed here directly, but different to her Potions Professor´s, no one had thought of secretly connecting her fireplace to the network, and she hadn´t been willing to take the risk of an official entrance into her room.

Something within her longed to lean back into the softness of her chair, close her eyes and simply let herself fall. But she couldn´t allow it. More than ever she needed any ounce of strength she possessed, and dwelling on the events of this night would strip her of this very strength.

She wouldn´t think of it, wouldn´t remember how she had stared after him when he stepped through the fireplace, how she had stood without seeing, one part of her still numb with shock, one part howling in fear, pain and horror behind the mental wall she had created inside herself. And that last part, ever cunning and calculating, that had immediately registered the implications of his exit. The fact that he, despite his own words, _was_ connected to the floo network. The fact that there was a way out of his chambers.

She had stood in his library for a very long time, not moving, not sitting, all her will bound on one aim – to get out of there. But though she now knew the way, she still lacked the means. There was no floo powder to be found, although she even entered his private bedroom. She did not dare breach the wards of his laboratory however, as she feared this would alert him immediately. She didn´t need even more conflict now.

Then, after about an hour, he had returned. She had hoped that the visit to the Headmaster would have lessened the feelings that drove her Potions Master, but Severus Snape looked every inch as angry and determined as before.

Even without participating in that talk, she knew exactly what had happened. Snape, assaulting the Headmaster, demanding to free her of her spy duties, to keep her safe. By force, if necessary. And the Headmaster´s calm, controlled arguing with a hint of sorrow in his blue eyes, how he would tell his trusted friend that there was no other way and that they couldn´t do without her. Helpless fury in Snape´s eyes as he longed to tell Dumbledore what he had seen in her mind. But her words stopped him. He knew what she was capable of.

They had argued for a long time, but Hermione had been able to read the Headmaster´s answers in her teacher´s face. Dumbledore wouldn´t stop her. But Snape wasn´t one to give up easily.

"I forbid it", he had snarled, sounding like himself again for the first time since her hallucinations had started, "The Headmaster may think he has the right to make this decision for you, but you won´t leave this library before you have changed your mind, Miss Granger!"

She had raised and eyebrow to that, and let condescending amusement play on her face, "Are you trying to blackmail me for my own best, Professor?"

"I will not let you continue, Miss Granger! It would be a crime to let you do this, and while I´m around, no such crime will happen in Hogwarts."

"Then you should consider giving up your position", she had answered, and slowly walked over to the mantelpiece. His eyes had followed her, but he was concentrating too hard on convincing her to notice something.

"You will stop this madness today, Miss Granger."

"I don´t think so."

She had reached the mantelpiece, her eyes fixed on the spot where his finger had touched the white marble. Suddenly, her whole body sprung to life as she whirled around and stretched a hand towards Snape.

"Accio floo powder", she called, and before Snape could react, the small bag with the grey powder inside was in her hand.

"Revoco!"

Before Snape´s astonished eyes, his fingerprints on the mantelpiece began to glow in a green, bright light. They seemed like the fingers of a ghost, imprinting the marble with their touch. She tossed a bit of the powder into the flames, and they turned green, like the ghostly fingers.

"Transfiguration Classroom", she said in her clear voice, and made ready to step through.

He hadn´t tried to stop her, whether he couldn´t or hadn´t wanted to she didn´t know.

"Miss Granger", he had called after her, while she had been half through already, "If you leave now, I will not feel responsible for your fate. I will have nothing to do with your pathetic little private war! Do not count on me to save you from your own foolishness again!

She snorted angrily as these words came to her mind now. What would she want with him? Had he done anything to help her? All her suffering had been caused by him. He´d been exposing her, hurting her, mortifying her with his every move. No, she was better off without one Severus Snape looming in the shadows.

That was why she had stepped through the fireplace without a look back. Why she had not turned around to see the desperate, lost expression on his face.

The transfiguration classroom she had entered by floo was not far from her private room She knew that the Headmaster probably awaited her report, but the need for privacy and silence was greater than any feeling of duty right now.

But as she had made to the exit of the classroom, a shadow darkened the frame of the door.

"Professor McGonagall", Hermione greeted her teacher quietly, nervousness tightening her throat. One look into the older woman´s face told her that she knew everything, and she braced herself against the flood of emotions that would surely assault her now. She couldn´t bear a dose of Gryffindor sentimentality now.

"Miss Granger", the professor nodded, her voice nothing but the usual crisp efficiency, "It is good to see you up and well again."

"I can´t tell you how good it feels", she had answered, pleasantly surprised by the other woman´s self control.

"That I believe", McGonagall answered, and a warm smile lightened her face for a moment, "There is something I would like to show you, Miss Granger. If you´d accompany me for a moment, please."

She would rather have declined the request, but discussing it probably would have taken longer than simply accepting. So she nodded and followed her professor out of the classroom and towards her private office.

"I believe that a private place, far away from the prying eyes of your peers, would simplify your task, Miss Granger", McGonagall said while opening a door to the right of her office, "And as it has come to my knowledge that I have offered you – secretly – a position as my apprentice, I have taken the liberty to prepare this room for you. You can set a password at your will, and a floo connection between your chambers and this room can easily be established. It wouldn´t be so hard for you to enter and leave the castle. Feel free to use it whenever you want. I won´t disturb you here."

Speechlessly, Hermione had stared at the small, nicely furnished room before her, her eyes suddenly burning with unshed tears. The simple generosity of this gesture had overwhelmed her, and she didn´t know how to react.

"Professor, I…"

"I know, Miss Granger, that there are things too terrible to be just talked away. I won´t molest you with my questions or emotions. One should not disturb a lioness from her hunt. I understand what you do, and should you ever be in need of help, come to me. Regardless what the hour or the situation. And now", the professor said, for one moment placing a hand on Hermione´s shoulder, "It is time for grading papers, I fear. Slytherins", she smiled and turned around, ready to leave.

"Professor", Hermione called after her, "About this apprenticeship…"

"I understand your reasons, Miss Granger", the professor answered as her eyes once more met those of her student. The warmth and trust they expressed made Hermione hurt inside, "And, if I may say so, should there one day be the time for such a decision, I would feel honoured to accept you as my apprentice. Sleep well, my dear."

…….

Days turned to weeks as Hermione fought on. Returning to the revels was hard, harder than she had thought. She had gotten too used to not being in pain not to miss her brief time of reconvalescence in Snape´s chambers. But she managed. She could manage everything, if only people would leave her alone, if they wouldn´t question and weaken her.

So she avoided any personal contact, any talk or gesture of friendship. She couldn´t risk being exposed again, and her ability to act was wearing thin these days.

McGonagall alone accepted her brisk coolness and simply let her be. It seemed to be her conviction that Hermione had the right to deal with it as she wanted to. She never entered the private room that she had granted her student, and Hermione was thankful for her discretion, as thankful as she could be.

The Headmaster would offer her a chair and hot chocolate when she came to report the latest events, he would tend the wounds that she chose to show him from time to time, only to give him the feeling of control over her state. Often, he would just sit there while she sipped her chocolate, watching her and waiting for her to open up to him. But she was used to far more pressure than just the worried blue eyes of this old man, and so she would smile at him, enjoy the warm sweetness of her drink and be silent until he gave up and let her leave.

With Draco, it was the hardest. Cruel words were necessary to drive him from her, words of coldness and reject, and his hurt, questioning glances would seek her out whenever they had lessons together or brushed by each other in the Great Hall. She avoided his eyes. There was too much feeling in them, and she felt so dead these days, she was afraid it would show in her face.

So she stayed away from all of them, except Harry and Ron, whom she had to endure. She couldn´t risk one of the would-be Death Eaters to run to her Master and tell him that she had quarrelled with those she was meant to supervise. But it was hard to listen to their chatting and wailing, to laugh with them and not show her unrest.

They were children, for goodness sake! Stupid and blind to what was going on around them, and she found it difficult to show patience with them. She knew now how Snape had often felt about them, and often was she tempted to deduce house point for lacking maturity.

They noticed something, of course. It wasn´t possible to keep the extent of weariness Hermione was feeling from them entirely. Harry was altogether too attentive to her liking. But she buried herself in the well known role of Hermione know-it-all and pretended that the slowly nearing NEWTs were driving her nuts. But nothing could have been farther from her mind.

Hermione kept going like a machine, only discipline and pride driving her through nights and days of endless toil. She didn´t rest, didn´t give herself time to reflect or remember. A voice, tiny and shrill, called to her from inside, telling her that she couldn´t go on like this forever, that she was driving herself to ruin. She didn´t listen. She had taken to preformulate homework in her mind while lessons or meals were keeping her form writing, she recited receipts or poems while she chatted with her "friends". All to keep the voices inside her from growing too loud or too powerful.

Somewhere in the darkness lurked despair, an abyss so black that she didn´t dare come even close to it. She was afraid that it would suck her in. Afraid that she would loose all control if she let herself go too much.

She didn´t allow herself to admit how much she longed for human warmth, for a touch of sympathy that wasn´t meant to inflict fear or terror. She didn´t allow herself to admit how much she was missing Snape.

He never talked to her. She wouldn´t raise her hand in his class any longer, and he didn´t seem to notice that she was there any more. His eyes would sweep over her as if she was nothing but an empty table and chair. It made her furious to experience his arrogance, the efficiency with which he had deleted her from his life. It seemed as if those weeks in his chambers had never happened, and his indifference hurt her when she thought about how much he had cost her.

But she had other problems than Snape. Voldemort was getting impatient, his punishments swifter and crueller. He demanded information, entrance to Hogwarts and the death of the traitor Snape, and she couldn´t give him what he wanted. At the same time, he still didn´t seem to trust her completely, not enough at least to risk introducing her plan, her great plan to end the war and her suffering.

Other Death Eaters posed a danger, too. They were so eager to please their Lord, and unwilling to let a mudblood best them. Some of them were watching Hogwarts, placing listening spells so well hidden and protected that the Headmaster couldn´t remove them without risking to expose Hermione. On more than one occasion had Death Eaters managed to enter the grounds of Hogwarts, though the castle itself still remained safe from them.

But not only Death Eaters were causing her headaches, for the very people she tried to protect, Harry and Ron, seemed to be doing everything to make her job even harder.

They had taken to sneaking around the castle by night, and while that had been a bad habit of them even in their first year, it got worse and worse over the first months of their seventh year. Visiting the kitchens or the astronomy tower didn´t seem enough to them these days.

They would dare each other to creep to the Great Halll at night, playing chess at the teacher´s table, or into the dungeons where Snape haunted the corridors. Life seemed a big game to them, nothing more, and when Hermione limped home in the nights, battered and broken, she had to restrain herself from punching them, for she could hear them boasting even through the door that connected her chambers with the Gryffindor´s Common Room.

They kept away from her more often now, knowing that she wouldn´t tolerate their behaviour, that she would speak of discipline, of school work, and all the other boring things they were trying to forget.

She tried to control her anger, she really did, but when she heard what they were planning, three weeks after her confrontation with Snape, something snapped inside her.

They wanted to sneak down to the Quidditch pitch and picnic there, in the middle of the night. Leaving the castle without protection, going to a place where the wards were reduced, for they would often get visitors from outside Hogwarts for the Quidditch games!

They could as well walk in front of Voldemort´s lair and scream: "Here we are".

And they wanted her to come along. Because "a break from studying" would do her good. Because "working so much wasn´t natural". Breaking all rules seemingly was, though.

"I am fed up with your stupidity!", she snarled after listening to their excited babbling for five minutes, sounding very much like Snape to Harry and Ron, "Don't you know that every Death Eater who really wants it can enter the grounds? Don't you know how dangerous this is?"

"It´s not that dangerous, actually, ´Mione", Ron had answered unconcerned, "There hasn´t been so much Death Eater activity lately, and, whatever, a guy must have some fun…"

"Not much activity? You just don´t know of the attacks because you don´t care! People are dying out there to save you here, people putting their life on the line for you every single day, and that´s how you thank them? By being boys, playing pranks, ignoring your responsibilities? How many more people will have to die for you before you decide to grow up, can you tell me that?"

Icy silence met her outburst. Only now did she realize what she had said, but she didn´t wish to take it back. She had meant every word of it. She knew that if Voldemort would find out about this, she would be punished for not informing him, perhaps killed. And all that just for a night of fun?

Harry had turned pale at her words, while Ron´s face flashed red with anger. They gave her a look of utter disgust and loathing, then turned on their heels and vanished through the portrait hole.

Hermione sighed and dropped unto one of the sofas. Sirius Black´s death still was a sore point to Harry, one he didn´t talk about much. He still felt guilty for his godfather´s fall through the veil, and with her words, she had implicitly confirmed that guilt.

But it was the truth, wasn´t it? Sirius had been as impulsive and emotional as Harry, rushing when he should have stayed to think. And Harry _had_ caused havoc that night, just because of his "I must save the world" complex and his belief that grown-ups couldn´t be trusted.

Wshe sighed again. What she had said was true. But they would hate her now, and although she hadn´t been able to talk to them openly for a long time, it hurt to lose her friends like that.

But there were other worries. Surviving the next day, for example. Being hated by Harry and Ron was nothing compared to causing Voldemort the slightest of displeasures.

She stayed up all night, sitting in the Common Room and staring out of the window. When they returned at about six in the morning, it was with noise and boasting and roars of laughter, and she knew that their nightly adventure wouldn´t remain a secret for very long.

…..

Her fears were confirmed all too soon. She had just left the Transfiguration classroom, with Harry and Ron keeping as much distance between them and her as possible, when a sharp pain shot into her arm.

She ducked away and into an empty room. She didn´t have to roll up her robe to see what had caused the pain, but she did it nonetheless. The Dark Mark pulsed on her white skin, like some animal from her nightmares.

She cursed, carefully replaced the cloth over the telling mark, and left the room with swift strides. Walking from the castle and to the edge of Hogwarts grounds, were the anti-apparition wards were no longer in place, she retrieved the black Death Eater cloak that she had hidden there for times when she couldn´t get to her room to fetch one.

She didn´t need a mask. It wasn´t granted to her. No secrecy for mudbloods.

Then she apparated, and found herself in a chamber of stone, within a circle the boundaries of which were marked by black marble. It was the only place in Voldemort´s "palace" where apparition was possible, and it was heavily guarded as always. She followed the cloaked men who motioned for her to accompany them, down various sets of stairs, to the dungeon throne room.

She had named it thus silently, but the name fit to the dark, windowless chamber with its sombre majesty. The Death Eaters did have a melodramatic tendency, and the room showed it all too much.

She had tried to determine its locations countless times, but there seemed to be no windows in this building, and all locating spells had failed. Neither could she be located by others from outside, as she had tried one night with Dumbledore. The whole thing seemed to be fool proof.

Though Voldemort, sitting on his throne like a thing from some horror novel, certainly was no fool.

The arrangements of the Inner Circle, standing along the walls of the chamber and leaving a free place right before the Dark Lord, left no doubt that this night would be about her. She had been called to be punished, and she would be lucky if she could leave alive. Still, bracing herself against the things to come, she entered the free space, and, falling to her hands and knees, crawled towards the Dark Lord.

His voice stopped her before she could kiss the hem of his black velvet robes.

"It has come to my attention that your _friends_ have decided to undertake a little adventure. You knew about it, I assume?", the voice was soft, hissing, and caused tremors to run through her body. She knew what this voice could command.

Dreading the unavoidable, Hermione nevertheless shook her head, "I found out too late, my Lord. Otherwise I would have informed you immediately…"

"You have to know everything that goes on in Hogwarts, little mudblood whore", he thundered, "I am not keeping you alive to satisfy the baser instincts of my Death Eaters! At least… not only for that."

Chuckles from the black robed men along the wall answered his joke.

Then he smiled, and it was the most frightening sight she had ever seen. She didn´t have to act the panicked whimpering that escaped her lips – it came quite naturally to her.

"Let me give you a tiny insight in what awaits you if you fail to be of use, my pet."

When the first waves of pain hit her, she bit her lips to keep silent, but soon, she couldn´t keep the screams from escaping. Blood clouded her eyes, and her body thrashed and convulsed like something that didn´t belong to her any longer.

Between the screams and sobbing breaths, she swore loyalty to him, thanking him for his "just punishment". It came natural to her by now. There was a small part in her mind that stayed alert, even though the rest of her would howl with pain, that would say the right words and do the right things no matter what happened to her. It was this part that had kept her alive for countless times.

"Join in, my faithful servants!", the Dark Lord finally called out to his Inner Circle, and her eyes widened in panic. It had never been that bad before, "Let´s teach the mudblood whore a lesson she will never forget!"

As they tortured her, her blood shod eyes rolled from one Death Eater´s face to the next.

Macnair. A wave of Cruciatus that set her whole body on fire.

Crabbe. Slicing hexes that turned her skin into a red mess.

Goyle. Invisible knifes slashing at her arms and legs.

She found no mercy, no regret. Not even lust or excitement in most of their faces. She was no human being, she realized as she writhed and crawled under their spells. She was a piece of meat, a disrespectful dog that had to be punished for its own good.

Then she met Lucius´ eyes and found terrible anger there. Anger and nervousness. He had brought her here, she could read in his eyes, he had introduced her to the Dark Lord. She was risking his position with him. Every misbehaviour of hers would be traced back to him.

Besides, they were disfiguring his toy.

And for a moment, with the small, insignificant power he had given her over him through his fears, she became mistress of her destiny. The pain was nothing to her in this moment of calm, only something they could do to her body. She could still manipulate them, and Malfoy, the most powerful of them all, belonged to her. Her eyes never leaving his face, she let her tongue flicker from her mouth and in a slow, almost sensual gesture and licked the blood from her bruised lips.

She could see his arousal in his eyes, in the way he gripped his wand harder and the hoarseness of his voice, shouting curses at her, and for a moment, she felt like laughing.

_I´m going crazy_, she realized in a moment of supreme clarity, _Not long now, then I will truly be one of them. I´m starting to enjoy this!_ And as she thought this, she could see the dark tunnel she was descending into, away from her friends, from Hogwarts and the simple peace of friendship, away from sanity and a life with meaning. _Somebody help me! I´m dying!_

Then, new pain hit her and her self shattered into thousand shards of agony.

mMm

A/N: Here we go again, folks!

I hope you like it, though it is a nasty cliffhanger, I must admit that much. Is she dead? Or completely crazy? Is this the end of Hermione as we know her?

Depends on your reviews, so tell me what you want to happen!

oh, and my excuses to all of you whose reviews I haven´t answered yet. But I thought you would like a new chapter better than just a wee little answer from me...

Next chapter should be up in a week, with a lot of Snape-suffering in it...


	14. Life Can Be Funny

Life can be funny

It was nearly midnight when Hermione returned to the castle, and even sealing the secret passageway was almost too much for her fading strength.

She could feel the magic inside her flicker, pulse erratically and nearly go out.

Five minutes it took her to close the door and tap the stones with her wand to reactivate the hiding spell. Her hands were bloody. Her wand was bloody, too. And she needed to rest against the wall, with the tattered remains of her cloak placed carefully between her bleeding back and the cold stone, before she found the strength to clean the smears of red from the secret door.

Her body was betraying her, in such a literal way that she almost found it amusing.

Then she turned around and faced the long dungeon corridor, followed by the hundreds of steps to Gryffindor tower.

She wouldn´t make it.

Her eyes flickered towards the turning that led to Snape´s classroom, then she shook her head, almost imperceptibly.

Definitely not an option. He had made it quite clear that her fate was nothing to him, and she wouldn´t turn to him for help.

Never.

But how to get to her room, to the safety of her bed and the cleanness of water and soap? 

The stairs were out of the question. She had learned several lifting charms to protect herself from being stuck in the dungeons with a broken leg, but her momentary condition wouldn´t allow her any magic but the easiest spells.

_Use a simple charm_, she told herself sternly, _nothing fancy. But which..._

Suddenly, a memory flashed before her, of Harry, sitting in the library and brooding over a heavy book, desperation in his eyes.

„A simple spell", he muttered again and again, while he ruffled his hair into even greater chaos, „A simple one. But which one do you mean, Sirius?"

Fourth year. Triwizard Tournament. First task. They had been unable to find a spell against thte dragon, but Harry had finally come up with another solution.

Now, Hermione raised one trembling hand. „Accio Firebolt", she croaked, feeling the blood in her mouth wet her tongue.

She wasn´t sure whether Harry´s broomstick would actually reach her and waited tensely. But then she felt the polished wood of the handle in her hand, even before her eyes took in the slender forms of the Firebolt, and she sighed in relief.

Awkwardly, she climbed onto the broomstick, her good hand clasped on the handle while her arm and leg dragged uselessly at her sight. She had always hated riding a broomstick, but now she thanked Harry for every single lesson he had forced her to take. The ride was clumsy and painful, and only sheer luck kept her from falling a few times, but when she finally reached the door to her chambers, not more than fifteen minutes could have passed.

Sighing with relieve, she dismounted and had to stifle a cry as her legs gave way under her and she fell to the ground. _Clean up_, she ordered herself hastily, and forced her screaming muscles into moving, _and dispose of the broomstick_.

With a flick of her wand, she send it back to Gryffindor tower. Hopefully, the seventh year´s boys and been asleep already when Harry´s Firebolt had gone astray, and no one would notice.

The floor was red with her blood, and she didn´t manage the cleaning charm correctly. She had to apply it three times, and her concentration was waning. Black spots were dancing in front of her eyes as she forced herself back into a standing position.

Only a few steps more, then she would be save. She cursed her own weakness. She could do this, damnation! Only a few steps...

Somewhere, in the darkness, there was a sound.

Hermione froze, her foot dispended in mid air. She dared not breathe. There it was again! The creaking of an old, rusty door, moving slowly in its hinges. A door – or a portrait, swinging aside to allow exit!

Ignoring all pain and the rising panic, Hermione rushed over to her own portrait, placed her hand on the old canvas and muttered her password.

The echoing sound of footsteps reached her ears as the portrait swung aside and admitted her. She was nearly through when her leg collapsed under her. A gasp of pain escaped her tightly drawn lips. No one must see her!

With a last, desperate effort, she dragged herself away from the opening hole and pushed the portrait shut.

She lay in the darkness, panting and nursing her leg, not even daring to whimper, and listened to the footsteps slowly advancing towards her door.

Had she cleaned the floor thoroughly enough? Were there traces of blood on the portrait? She hadn´t thought of cleaning her hands before she had touched it! What if...

_Calm down, Hermione! It´s probably a student, sneaking out after curfew. He won´t even look at your portrait. You´re perfectly safe..._

But then, a voice cut into her calming mantra, and she thought her heart would stop beating.

„Hermione?"

It was Ron, definitely, there was no doubt as to the owner of this voice.

Panic seized her. He hadn´t seen her, had he? Did he know she was in here, and in what state?

„Hermione! I know that you´re in there, open the door!"

But she couldn´t! Hell, she couldn´t even move. Nor was she exactly presentable.

„I saw the Firebolt vanish and return, and I saw your door closing when I rounded the corner. Stop pretending you´re not there!"

She waited in silence for him to go away. Perhaps he would think he had been mistaken.

„All right, then don´t let me in if you think this funny", he said after a while. His voice held anger and hurt, a disbelief that she would treat him like this, and she wanted nothing more than take him into a long embrace. Unfortunately, she couldn´t use her left arm.

„I had hoped to talk to you, you know", he went on, „About what happened yesterday night. Harry´s very unhappy. He refused to talk about you all day, but I´m sure he would be so relieved if you came and talked to him. Hermione?"

Silence. A long sigh from the corridor.

„I know you don´t like the way we behave, Hermione. You think it´s irresponsible. You think we should grow up. But he´s so afraid. And when he´s on his own, in the dormitory for example, he goes all pensive and brooding. He thinks he´s going to die, I think. And very soon. All he wants is a glimpse of the life he could have had. Is that too much to ask? Is it so wrong if I distract him a bit and help him to have a bit of fun? Talk to me, Hermione!"

Wide eyed, Hermione stared into the darkness. When had it happened? When had she stopped talking to her friends, listening to them, taking them seriously? She hadn´t even noticed Harry´s mood shifts, nor Ron´s decision to make it easier for him. She had misjudged, and misjudged badly.

„So you´re sitting in there, feeling all superior, aren´t you?", Ron asked from the other side of the door, harsh with disappointment and anger, „I thought I could talk to you. I had hoped you could help me. But you never have time for us these days, always dashing around for your wonderful apprenticeship. Oh, you´re so much better than us, Miss Apprentice Granger", he mocked angrily, be she could still hear the hurt in his voice, „And of course you will have nothing to do with a pair of losers like us. And here I am, stupid little Ron, who thought he could count on you. Funny how wrong one can be. Good night to you, Hermione! I hope you glower in righteousness!"

And he left. In the darkness of her chambers, Hermone lay on the floor like a crumpled heap of bones, one hand stretched out in a useless gesture of begging towards the closed door, tears wetting her face, and unbearable pain jolting through her body.

If this was life, she could really do without it.

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOo

Unlike Hermione Granger, Severus Snape did glower in righteous anger for the next weeks.

When she had left the room on that fateful night, he had stared after her in utter consternation. It had taken him ten minutes to understand how she had done it, and left him cursing his own carelessness and her bloody brilliance.

He had considered going after her, but known that she would be in her chambers by now. He wasn´t looking forward to create a turmoil near Gryffindor tower by banging on the Head Girl´s door and screaming for her to open it. He had still too much dignity left for that.

Instead, he had talked to Albus again. And again. But after even Albus had lost his good humour over the recurring visits by his gloomy Potions Master, he had finally admitted to himself that there was nothing he could do to change the situation.

Anger had taken over then. He was furious with her for letting that happen to herself, for going back there after he had shown her a way out, for ignoring his help and support. Judging from what her nightmares, hallucinations and the forbidden trip into her mind had revealed, she wouldn´t survive till Christmas. Not on her own, and one could barely count on the rather helpless Albus and the reserved Minerva to help. If she didn´t come to her senses very soon, Hermione Granger was as good as dead.

She obviously wanted it that way, the stupid girl.

Hermione bloody Granger. She was a red, pulsing spot in his mind. Every time he thought of her, fury, shame, ennervation and worry mingled to a ball of inextricable mental chaos that destroyed all concentration or contentment.

She behaved as if she had invented spying, damn her! As if he didn´t know the job from inside out. As if he didn´t know better than her what awaited her. Yet another of those infatuating "good persons" in the Order who chose to ignore the counsel of Snape the bastard in favour of their own, sugar coated versions of reality. Well, her ignorance would certainly kill her, but even Snape couldn´t bring himself to consider this result as satisfying.

But, naturally, no one was listening to him, and the only way to convince Albus – to tell him of what he had seen – would drive her away for sure. At least she had a bed, a roof and medical attention here. That was probably more than what Fudge would provide for if she turned over to him.

Futile thoughts, all of them. Severus couldn´t do anything about her, he couldn´t change the situation, and he couldn´t think about her without getting himself a headache.

So he stopped thinking of her.

Or at least he tried to. For it seemed that everyone had joined in the great, sinister ploy of "Driving Severus Snape mad with talking about Hermione Granger".

Albus was the worst. After several explosions of Severus´ temper, he had stopped suggesting that Severus should "help" her.

He seemed to believe that a kind of "bond" had formed between them over the fight against the addiction. The sentimental old fool. What was Severus to do, hold her hand while she bled to death? Carry a picnic basket after her while she went to battle?

"Certainly not, dear boy", Albus had tried to calm the younger man, "It´s just that you have more experience in this field than any other person in Hogwarts. You could help her to plan, develop new ways to get closer to Tom Riddle and so on. You could…"

"You don´t ask me to hand a bottle of whisky to an alcoholic, or a muggleborn girl to a Death Eater either", Snape had refused heatedly, "Why should I help Miss Granger in her determined efforts to kill herself? I do not support this type of suicide, Albus!"

_Besides_, he had added silently, _She wouldn´t let herself be touched by me anyway after what I did_. This thought had awakened the shame again, and _that_ had darkened his mood even more.

_She _ considered herself dead, didn´t she? She had given up and didn´t expect to get through this war alive. Why should he bother, then, bloody hell!

If she was determined to kill herself, he was determined not to worry about it. She was only a girl, for goodness sake. Though an unusually brilliant and talented one…

Draco seemed to think that Severus was the new authority for matters of Miss Granger, as well.

"She doesn´t talk to me anymore", he had told Snape one afternoon in a desperate voice, "She´s pushing me away again, even worse than before her withdrawal. She seems to think that she could endanger me."

There were tears in his eyes. Snape had to suppress a disgusted snort. Gryffindor sentimentality from a Slytherin. Dear Gods.

He wanted to tell Draco that Miss Granger was damn right about this. One successful break through her defences, and the Dark Lord would know everything about her and Draco. If she was determined to go on with it, she was right to distance herself from everyone. He had done it, too.

But the fact that Miss Granger was preparing the likelihood of her own death wouldn´t calm Draco Malfoy, Snape was quite sure about it.

So instead of the truth, he had told Draco that Miss Granger was a grown up and quite competent. Competent enough to decide what was best for her, and that he, Snape, really had important work to do, so would you please excuse me Draco, just go away!

And Draco had gone, with those impossible tears glinting in his eyes, and had left Snape with the very unpleasant feeling of guilt and a dry mouth that could only be wetted by several glasses of whisky.

Only Minerva hadn´t talked to him about her. And _that_ really made him nervous. She had just looked at him with her steely, intelligent eyes, seemingly examining every square inch of his face, until he found himself justifying why he didn´t want anything to do with this "madness".

"Funny", Minerva said after she had listened to his ramblings for a couple of minutes, and sipped her tea. They were sitting in her living room, in front of a dancing fire that drove away the evening chill. She had said she simply wanted "a good conversation", and he had fallen for it, bloody idiot that he was.

Why was it that Minerva managed to reduce him to a babbling 10 year old every time? He could have slapped himself for accepting the invitation!

"What the hell could be funny about this situation?", he asked sullenly.

"To watch you caring about someone", she answered simply.

_There we go again_, he grumbled silently, _She´s talking psychology to me! _

"I do not care about her", he very nearly growled, "I´m just disgusted of this waste of intelligence. And as a teacher I do believe that…"

"I know, I know, Severus. Spare me", she interrupted him, smiling fondly at him, "But even if you don´t care about her at all", her tone made very clear that she didn´t believe him a bit, but he was too weary to argue the point, "I still feel strange, for I remember a discussion very much like this, a long time ago."

"We never talked about something even remotely similar to this before", he disagreed roughly.

"I know. It was a discussion I had with Albus, twenty years ago, when he informed me that you would spy out the Death Eaters for us. I was very much of your opinion, then, and was absolutely determined to keep away from you if I couldn´t protect you. I wouldn´t support such madness, and if you were so eager to kill yourself, you still wouldn´t get my blessings to it. Funnily, I couldn´t stick to my decision very long though. Must be Gryffindor sentimentality that made me stupidly help you. Do you think it would have been better if I had kept my resolve?"

She smiled at him, and for one moment her hand touched his cheek, soft and warm, like a summer´s breeze.

"I, for one, am glad for every minute I could spend with you, Severus. I won a precious friend that way, one I couldn´t do without."

He had left her a little later, for there was nothing he could say or argue after her words. _No chance against Gryffindor women_, he thought again, _Best keep away from them_.

But the thought of returning to his chambers, of sitting in the library where he had violated her mind, made him shudder.

Thus midnight found him wandering the corridors of Hogwarts once more, and even the strokes of the huge clock couldn´t rise him from his thoughts.

But the feeling of colliding strongly with a smaller body could. Anger surged through him as he rose from the floor, inconspicuously rubbing his backside that had collided painfully with the cold stone.

There, opposite to him, stood a small figure, robed and hooded. A student, obviously. What the hell possessed them to roam the school at night? Didn´t they have enough work to do? Well, he would see to it that his classes would be too tired to even consider such nonsense over the next weeks.

"What do you think you´re doing, wandering the corridors in the middle of the night?", he barked, "Lower your hood immediately."

The slender figure pulled back her hood and revealed Hermione Granger´s face, glowing in the light of the nearly full moon.

_Of course, it has to be **her**_, he groaned inwardly, _Just perfect. Some God or the other is having loads of fun, I bet._

"I´m too tired for your little games, Professor", she answered, not caring to keep the weariness out of her voice, "Deduce some house points and then let me go."

"I didn´t know it was you, Miss Granger. I…", Severus´ voice died as he took in her appearance. One eye was blackened and swollen, her upper lip split, and dried blood was smeared over the lower half of her face. Her stiff posture told him that the long cloak was hiding at least one graver injury.

"Shouldn´t you be seeing the Headmaster?", he inquired while worry cursed through his veins. She had been at the revels again, and it seemed as if nothing had changed. Still she was beaten, tortured, and raped, and still she crept back into the castle, silently hiding her wounds.

He had to see Albus about this. What the hell did the old man think he was doing?

"I will, Professor, and very soon", she replied, "But as long as I am not mortally wounded, nothing will keep me from taking a long, hot shower beforehand. I´m feeling…", the sentence ended in a whisper he couldn´t make out, but he didn´t have to hear it to know how she felt. He remembered all too well.

"Dirty", he finished her sentence hoarsely, for a moment forgetting his resentment of her, "And worn out."

She nodded to that.

"Funny, isn´t it?", she asked bitterly, "That the only person who really understands me is the one refusing to talk to me. Must be my special luck. Good night, Professor."

And she vanished into the darkness.

oOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOo

A/N: It´s me, the author! I´m back! (ducking behind her computer to avoid objects thrown at her). Yes, I know, I´ve been a very bad girl. I really felt terrible letting you wait so long.

But I have a good excuse! I was ill and couldn´t get enough of my brain working to write a single sentence. I really tried!

Anyway, those of you I haven´t already answered to will receive a reply over the next week.

And I promise (I swear I will keep the promise this time) to update until Wednesday!

I have decided to reunite them in the next chapter, simply couldn´t bear keeping them apart any longer. I hope that´s okay with all of you.

Now, all that is left to do (aside from pointing out that I´m addicted to your reviews and will have a withdrawal at least as painful as Hermione´s if they stop coming) is thank you once again for all your support and comments. All of you who are writers themselves will know how much they mean to me, and all who aren´t yet: why do you waste time reading this? Get going!

Oh, one more think: My humble apologies to all who read this chapter before, in the unwillingly unbetaed version that was posted first. Hope you forgive me for that. Did you at least learn a bit of German while you were at it (smirk)?

All the best, Kayly


	15. Regrouping

A/N: An author´s note that is slightly out of place, I know, but Lu Ling Qi asked me in a review to post an answer to her question at the top of my chapter, and how could I not grant a wish from my faithful reviewers, lol.

She asked if there will be a happy ending to this story, and I´ve really thought about this, but after a long period of scratching my head and talking to myself I must say that I really don´t know. I have no idea how exactly this story will develop (though I do have a vague outline in mind), and I don´t want to close down possible developments by deciding just now.

It also depends on all of you – do you want a happy ending, regardless to what the story may develop into? Comments are more than welcome to this question! I´m sorry that I can´t give a more definite answer, Lu Ling Qi!

And another request: If you want questions answered, please give me your email adress, as I don´t want to bother the rest of the readership with long replies (sorry to you all!)

Read on now, I hope you like it!

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoO

Regrouping

He watched her getting worse over the next week. She had started to use a glamour charm, for she wasn´t any longer able to hide the effects of her nightly activities completely. A body needed time to heal, and hers weren´t the medical powers of a Madame Pomfrey. Or a Severus Snape.

He had long ago learned to see through those charms, and so he could watch her waste away. The long hair, once sleek and glossy, turning into a dull, bushy mass, the circles under her eyes so black the resembled tunnels into the deep. The lips raw and cracking open. Half healed bruises all over her face and hands.

Her friends didn´t seem to notice the change, but judging their behaviour, Severus very much doubted that they considered themselves her friends at the moment. They had chosen seats as far away from her as possible, and kept shooting accusatory glances at her.

She just ignored them, picking through her meal with a bowed head and the gestures of an old woman. Examining her from afar, he realized that his calculations had been wrong. Or rather too generous. Two or three weeks, he didn´t believe that she would have more than this left.

Then, exhaustion and desperation would cause her to make a fatal mistake. Mistakes were always fatal around the Dark Lord. He felt sadness stirring inside him, a mournful regret, as if he was bidding her goodbye already.

But then he realized how inappropriate he must look, staring down from the teacher´s table at a Gryffindor girl.

It was later that same day, during his potions class, that she fell asleep. He had been watching her from the corner of his eye, watching from the moment she had entered the room. Her "friends" were doing their best to ignore her, and Draco was seated in the front half of the class, together with the other Slytherins, so that he had no possibility to look back at her without risking everyone noticing. Severus was quite glad that Draco still had the self control not to turn around and look, anyway, as Gryffindorish as he had become these days.

Therefore, he was the only one to notice when her eyes closed and her head slowly dropped onto her chest. He froze in surprise, but managed to hide it immediately under a fierce scowl.

What to do? He couldn´t let her sleep very well, since he was considered all-seeing and all-knowing and was not going to risk his reputation for this would be all-knowing girl. But shouting at her? Making the whole class aware of her state? A very bad idea.

Passing Longbottom and his hopelessly ruined potion, Severus was suddenly seized by an idea. Peering critically into the cauldron, he extracted a couple of leaves from one of the hidden pockets in his robe, and let the sink into the sickly green potion.

"Mr. Longbottom! This isn´t even remotely the correct colour, although its lack of development seems to mirror your brain activities quite fittingly. Pray tell me why in nearly seven years you haven´t managed to once – at least once! – get a potion right!"

As he had expected, his angry voice didn´t rouse Miss Granger from her exhausted sleep. The booming explosion that took place only half a minute later, however, was quite sufficient. He dismissed her with the other class members, the only exception being Neville, who had – once more – to clean the floor and dispose of the exploded cauldron. He was much more competent on this part of his potions lesson than on the brewing process, however.

The image of Hermione Granger, falling asleep over her potions textbook, stayed with him even after she had left the room. It remained for the three ensuing lessons of the day, and when classes had ended, his restless wanderings of the corridors took him near the secret door, as it had happened often during the last weeks.

He heard her when she was still three turnings away, and he frowned at this carelessness. Retreating to an unused room near the entrance to the passageway, he watched her arrival. She checked the rooms, but so sloppily that she wouldn´t have seen him even if he hadn´t used a strong concealment charm, and _that_ really added to his worry.

That she had let him hear and see her, without even noticing that he was there…

_Get her out of your mind now!_, he ordered himself sternly, turned around and left for his chambers, _She´s not your responsibility. Find some work, damn you!_

But the tranquillity so absolutely necessary for the complicated art of brewing would elude him tonight. He knew a hopeless cause from many years of failed efforts, and this evening was one.

Instead, he cleaned his lab thoroughly, strolling around his rooms and moving one object, touching another, all to from himself the deep nervousness he felt. Finally, after the ridiculousness of his own behaviour was no longer to be ignored, he settled for reading. Something light, something to improve his mood.

Whitman then. He chose an arm chair near one of the huge windows and opened the small volume. Whitman´s patriotism and mindless romanticism always cheered him up. He leafed through the books, reading a passage here and there, until his eyes found one of the most famous poems Whitman had ever written. One of the most pathetic ones, as far as he was concerned.

O Captain! My Captain!

O Captain! My Captain! Our fearful trip is done,

The ship has weather´d every rack, the prize we sought is won,

The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,

While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring;

But O heart! Heart! Heart!

O the bleeding drops of red,

Where on the deck my Captain lies,

Fallen cold and dead.

Oh heart indeed! Severus had always hated that poem, and now he remembered why. The insolence of it! He knew well enough that Whitman had written it shortly after the murder of Lincoln, and that it had been meant as a reverence to the fallen statesman, but who had ever heard of a Captain sacrificing himself for his crew?

It had not been Lincoln who had won this war single-handedly. It had been won on the back of thousands of men, children and women. Thousands of soldiers, slaves and spies. But no one saw them.

No one saw the shadowed faces and the bended backs of those who worked for the Order either, all their eyes concentrated on the two shining figures on the top: Albus Dumbledore and Harry bloody Potter. If they would win, or rather successfully survive long enough to let Mr. Potter remember his responsibilities, to them the masses would look.

If Whitman had been sorted into a house, Severus mused mockingly, he would have become Gryffindor for sure.

But still, something kept him reading, and if it only was the fear of too much time and nothing to do on his hands.

O Captain! My Captain! Rise up and hear the bells;

Rise up – for you the flag is flung – for you the bugle trills,

For you bouquets and ribbon´d wreaths – for you the shores a-crowding,

For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;

Here Captain! Dear father!

The arm beneath your head!

It is some dream that on the deck,

You´ve fallen cold and dead.

Anger stirred inside him. For a moment he wondered why this poem could move him so, when he had just waved it away all the other times. Anger quickly replaced this thoughts.

There they were again, all those good people with their sugar coated lives, fighting a war and letting it being won by others. Then they would look at the victims that had done the necessary, courageous men and women who had cared less for themselves than for others, and would play the shocked: "Oops – that wasn´t me, was it? What a mess! But his sacrifice will never be forgotten."

Trumpets and horns, ribbons and cheers. Humbug!

Everyone forgot the spies! Miss Granger struggled day and night in a silent fight, she had given up everything that had meant something to her, and her friends didn´t even notice that she had changed. Probably blamed the NEWTs for it. So much for the noble sacrifice!

My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still,

My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will,

The ship is anchor´d safe and sound, its voyage closed and done,

From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won:

Exult O shores, and ring O bells!

But I with mournful tread,

Walk the deck my Captain lies,

Fallen cold and dead.

Severus would never admit it to anybody, but the poem had him now. An image formed in his mind, that of a huge ship, weathered and wrecked, with no one but two lonely figures aboard, one lying motionlessly on the deck, one standing beside it, with its head bowed.

He saw the cheering crowds surrounding the ship, but they had their backs turned to it, and their cheering was not meant for those two figures. They didn´t even see them. They were probably cheering some Harry Potter of the Civil Wars.

Then he moved closer. Somehow, it didn´t surprise him to find the face of that lying figure not bearded and male. It was young, much too young for the lines of sorrow and the bitter curve of the mouth. Miss Granger´s face. Cold and dead.

He could imagine her funeral now. She wouldn´t return one day, and after a sensible wait, Albus would inform the school that she had been captured by Death Eaters. Perhaps they would never find her body. Perhaps they would wish they never had, for Severus knew how they treated traitors.

And then, after a month or two, they would bury her. And Albus wouldn´t tell anyone. He would wish to spare Potter and Weasley, and the whole school. So she would be lowered into the ground and remembered as Hermione Granger, intelligent friend of The Boy Who Lived, Gryffindor know-it-all and one more helpless and innocent victim to the war.

She would be buried without anyone ever knowing who she really had become, what she had sacrificed to keep those whom she loved safe. And Harry would grow up, sobered by the dead of his second best friend, and would defeat the Dark Lord, and everyone would cheer. Only Hermione couldn´t any more. And no one would ever remember her.

But he would mourn for her. He knew what she had done, what she had tried to achieve. He would never forget her bravery, her cunning and her brilliance. He would…

He looked up from his book, his eyes meeting his own, shocked face that was mirrored in the panes of the widow.

Bloody Hell. Minerva had been right. He really cared for her.

He cursed, sprang up from his chair, and only his absolute respect for books stopped him from throwing the poor Whitman across the room. That happened when one mingled with Americans!

But already the shock of realization faded and his brain snapped into action. He knew what to do now, finally. And after a moment of whizzing thoughts and tranquil clarity, he knew how to do it, too.

Returning Whitman to his place on the shelf with a sour grin, he left his chambers and silently made to the secret passageway.

OoOoOoOo0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0

Another night, another revel.

Mutely, Hermione followed the Death Eaters that escorted her back to the Apparating Circle. The Dark Lord had been merciful tonight, if one could image him harbouring a feeling like mercy.

He had demanded results, again, and his anger about her inability to get rid of the traitor Snape had increased. But perhaps even he had noticed the state she was in, or Lucius had pointed it out in one of the private conversations they had, for he refrained from hurting her much.

She was astonished by his mild behaviour. Of course she didn´t escape a good beating, the Inner Circle had seen to that, but she couldn´t take that seriously any more. She knew the difference between a beating and real pain by now.

While she apparated back to the edge of the Forbidden Forest, she already mused over the other, more significant problem the evening had posed. How to fake success concerning her beloved Potions Master, alias Snape the traitor? She couldn´t hope for his cooperation, and a visible result of some kind was the least she would have to present sometime over the next weeks.

Slowly, she limped back to the castle while she envisioned her possibilities. Perhaps she could really slip something into his drink? A mild poison, something that would keep him quite unhappy for a few days? He deserved it, after all…

The shadow of her former mischievous grin surfaced for a moment, when suddenly her subconscious screamed a warning at her. She whirled around, her robes billowing around her like a creature of darkness, and trapped the dark figure to her left between the stem of a tree and her wand, aiming neatly at its throat.

"Who are you?", her cold, emotionless voice pierced the silence, "If you make a move, you will be dead before you finish it!"

"Admirable precision, Miss Granger", a silky voice answered her threat and her eyes widened in disbelief, "It is, however, not advisable to finish your move. I honestly don´t know how many House Points you would lose for killing a teacher."

"What the hell do you think you´re doing, sneaking up tome like that?", she hissed, so furious and relieved at the same time that she felt like collapsing to the ground.. Reluctantly, she removed her wand from his throat, but kept it ready in her hand.

A light grew from the tip of her Professor´s wand, and she could finally see Snape´s face. Which meant that he could also see hers, newly blackened eye and all. Hell, as if it mattered any longer to keep up appearances with him.

"I´ve been waiting for you, Miss Granger", he replied smoothly.

She snorted, "That much is obvious, Professor. Are there any particular reasons you´d like to elaborate on, or can I get inside now?"

"I would ask for your manners, but I know why they left you", he replied. To her surprise, his words lacked the biting quality she had become so used to.

"It is not exactly easy to say that… But I have come to apologize. And to make a proposal."

She stared at him, disbelieving, but his face was hidden by shadows. It hadn´t sounded like a joke. But it must be, surely. He wouldn´t… apologize?

"Right", she said dryly, "That settles it. Either you´re a hallucination or I have cracked sooner than I thought. Both ways, I should go and find a bed to die in."

"I´m flattered that you didn´t mention the possibility of a nightmare", his voice as dry as hers, "But I was serious, Miss Granger. And I would ask you to at least listen to me, although I know that I have no right to demand it."

She pondered this. On the one hand, she didn´t have the slightest wish to stand here, in the cold, with her back aching all over, and listen to him probably once more explaining why she mustn´t return to Voldemort.

On the other hand… he had asked, not demanded. And politely to that.

"Five minutes", she finally said, angry with herself, "And if I don´t like what I hear, I will leave even sooner."

"Fair and just", he accepted. Bracing himself against what he would have to do now, Severus said: "Our last meeting didn´t end exactly…harmonious."

Hermione just snorted instead of an answer.

"I have apologized sincerely for what I did. I know however that it was unforgivable in many ways. But I hope you understood that my following behaviour stemmed not from my harassing nature, but from the deep wish to protect you from further suffering. Knowing what you did and what it… felt like led me to the belief that you had to be stopped, and that I was the one to stop you. When the Headmaster ignored my requests for your safety, however, I decided that I would not be a part in the destruction of an innocent girl."

Another snort, angry this time, and he saw that she was turning to go.

"I have finally realized that this decision, and my believes, were wrong. You are neither an innocent girl, nor do you need protection, at least not in the way I wanted to give it to you. No innocent girl, but a woman with the potential to become a master spy. You don´t need someone to save you, but someone to support you and keep your back shielded. That is what I offer to do."

Silence followed. Obviously, she had forgotten that his five minutes were spent by now. She seemed totally nonplussed. Confused.

"Am I getting you right?", she finally asked, scepticism heavy in her voice, "You´re offering me a partnership? With me spying and you sitting at home and waiting to stitch me together again?"

"A partnership between two equals. Two spies", he nodded, "I may be out of business, thanks to you", he said lightly, but she could still here the hurt in his words, "But I know more about this work than anybody else in the Order. And you need someone by your side."

The idea of Snape standing by her side and supporting her in her fight for the good side would have made her laugh madly, if not for the utter seriousness that lay in his voice, and the tiredness and pain that crept through her.

Some part of her realized that he was right. She couldn´t do it on her own. She had known that weeks ago during the withdrawal, and she knew it now. Could she afford to refuse the help that was offered?

But it was Snape who offered it. Snape, who had betrayed her. Who had bickered and criticized and made fun of her so often she couldn´t count it. Snape, who had hurt her more than any Death Eater could have done. Offering her help?

"Why are you doing this?", she asked, mistrust evident in her voice.

He hesitated. To disclose his reasons was against his nature. He never gave anyone more information than they needed to act according to his plan. He wished he could simply order her to agree! She was a student, after all.

But no, she wasn´t. She was on an entirely different level. Independent, with a pride and a … will of her own that she defended fiercely. If he wanted to work with her, he would have to tackle her as if she was he. He had never obeyed to orders very well, and neither would she.

She wouldn´t agree without this. And it was vital that she agreed. For herself, and for the war.

"Because I remember how it felt to be going there, every night, with no one caring if I´d come back alive", he answered after a while, and although he had planned this answer as the best strategy to gain her trust, he realized with surprise that it was the truth, "Because I finally realized that it´s not my job to make your life even more difficult or to fight you on the way. That I, instead, can help you with the burden that is yours to carry. And I´ve come to tell you that – if you´re willing to do it, that is – you can rely on my help."

Slowly, he moved the tip of his wand closer to his face, so that his features were touched by the light. She could see the honesty in his eyes, the plead for understanding. But he was a master spy, and he had fooled her before.

"This is all very touching", she commented in that cool, controlled voice of hers, "But why the hell should I trust you, Professor? You´ve not exactly encouraged such a feeling."

"Take a look", he answered simply and inclined his head a bit, so that she could reach him more easily with her hands.

"What?", pure shock was written clearly in her face, disbelief of what he had just invited her to do, "You mean…"

"I realize that I have wronged you deeply, Miss Granger. I´ve abused you in a way that I´ve… sworn never use again. I wouldn´t trust myself under such circumstances. Therefore, the only possibility to remove those obstacles is to assure yourself that there´s no falseness in my proposal."

She shook her head.

"I´m sorry, but I can´t do that, Professor. Watching the private memories of someone else…"

For a moment his face changed into the forbidding expression it always wore when someone failed to obey his orders. Then, understanding darted across it.

"You probably remember how it felt for you", he said thoughtfully, "But this is different, Miss Granger. I´m allowing you to do it, in fact I´m asking you for it. There will be no barriers to overcome in my mind, and no violence necessary. Proceed, please."

Still she hesitated, but when she saw that he was absolutely serious about it, she nodded slowly.

Carefully, tentatively, she laid her palms on his temples and met his dark, glowing eyes. Then, she delved into his mind with the ease of a practiced swimmer in a calm lake. He barely felt her soft, featherlike touch on his mind as she started to sort through his memory. With a discretion he hadn´t thought anyone capable of, she avoided all memories of a more private kind, concentrating only on those that concerned her.

_First lesson after summer holidays, the new Gryffindors and Slytherins assembled. Severus delivering his speech as he did every year, while his eyes fixed on one person in the room. Harry Potter, looking every bit like his father James Potter, the bane of his school years. _

_Questioning Potter, he noticed the girl beside him practically bouncing up and down on her chair to give the answers. Another little know-it-all, he thought frustrated, ignoring her attempts._

_0o0_

_Grading the first essays of the class, he came across hers. Longer than the other ones by far, written in a meticulous, neat handwriting that covered inch and inch of parchment. While he read, he found himself astonished by her knowledge and abilities to express herself. _

_0o0_

_Hermione maturing in a quick series of memories, year after year, her eyes shining with excitement and interest and the will to learn while her rashness subdued somewhat. _

_Snape watching her, marvelling her process and fearing it at the same time. She was so very much like himself at her age. Self-confident and brilliant, those around her being much too undemanding for her intelligence. He wouldn´t let arrogance be her downfall. _

_So he criticized her, pointed out even the smallest failures in her otherwise flawless works with malice, bickered and harassed her. She accepted it all without anger. He started to grade her papers not to school but to university standards. She bowed to it, though the glittering in her eyes told him she knew, and worked even harder. He started to give her different tasks than the rest of her class, forcing her to produce potions very much advanced. She accepted his decision and doubled her efforts. _

_0o0_

_Hermione in her fifth year, finishing an especially hard task without the slightest hesitation or mistake. His heart filled with pride as he watched her work, and when she had bottled the potion, she looked up at him and smiled, a smile of such dazzling beauty that it made him cringe in shame. She deserved a better teacher!_

_0o0_

_Snape, Hermione and Draco in the Headmaster´s office. His head buzzing with the knowledge that he had failed her, had let her fall into the Dark Lord´s arms. Had he worked her to hard? What had driven her to the dark side?_

_Then the revelations, and his horror as understanding sunk in. She was the cause of his freedom! It was on her back that he enjoyed the pleasures of life. What the hell was she thinking when she risked everything just to enter the game? _

_0o0_

_Her first hallucinating fit, after he had tormented her with Lucius´ letter. Severus felt her shudder as she watched her own face, contorted in pain and fear, nearly withdraw in horror when the memory of Hermione offered herself to him. Then, her astonishment washed over him as she watches Severus kneeling down beside the girl. _

_Felt his anger, shock and hurt at her state. But no pity. She was too intelligent to be pitied. _

_0o0_

_Snape sitting on his sofa after having delved into her mind for the second times. No thoughts relieving the agony of his mind. Shame, guilt and remorse burning everything away. Then, suddenly, fierce protectiveness flared inside him. He would not allow it! He would not let her turn into the same thing he had become. He would save her._

_0o0_

_His decision to come here tonight… He felt her probing this memory deeper, testing its accuracy, somehow examining it critically like a potential buyer would handle some precious goods, twisting and turning it in ways he had never encountered before. He wouldn´t have been able to keep anything from her, even if he had wanted to, and only now did he fully realize what a Master Legiliment she was. _

_When she had finally tested it to her satisfaction, she tried to draw back, not even brushing the other mental images that danced around her, but he wouldn´t let her go this way. She needed to know more, and so he pushed forward another scene, offered it to her, not overwhelming her with it, leaving her the choice and allowing her to carefully, very slowly, enter it. _

_0o0_

_His pride as he knelt at the Dark Lord´s feet, finally taken into the Death Eater´s circle. His horror, as suddenly a nude muggle was thrown into the circle, tortured and raped. "Kill her, Severus", a dark voice whispered in his ears, "To become one of us, you only have to kill her!" His inner screams as he aimed his wand at her, tip trembling slightly, and threw the Killing Curse. _

_0o0_

_The younger Snape kneeling before Dumbledore, crying bitterly, burying his head in the robe of his older wizard, "Forgive me", he whispered again and again, "Please forgive me, Headmaster…"_

_0o0_

_Arriving at the revels again, for the first time as a spy, his hands and back wet with sweat. His inner revulsion as a muggle girl was tossed towards him. "I can´t do this! Gods, I can´t do this!", his mind screamed at him, but his hand were steady as he threw the killing curse at her. Some part of himself died with her._

_0o0_

_Patrolling around the Labyrinth of hedges that had been erected for the Triwizard Tournament, hoping desperately that the Potter brat wouldn´t manage to kill himself, when, suddenly, bright hot pain bloomed on his lower arm. _

_Staring at the outline of skull and snake that formed on his pale skin, his face twisting in anger and fear, it took him a moment to realize the implications of the agony that shook his body. _

_The Dark Lord was back. He would have to return to him. Sorrow washed over him, overwhelming him for a moment and he fell to his knees, nursing his throbbing arm with the other hand. "Gods, why is there no mercy in this world?", he whispered, bowing his head. _

_Then he straightened, his gestures those of an old man, and rushed of in search for the Headmaster._

_0o0_

_Another night, another revel. Returning to Grimmauld Place shortly before midnight, he made sure that his bleeding shoulder was hidden by his cloak before he opened the entrance door. A surely looking Sirius Black awaited him. _

"_They are in the kitchen", he informed him curtly, "Waiting for his majesty the reformed Death Eater to return. Had fun tonight, Snivellus?"_

_The face of a child flashed before his eyes, barely six years old, and screaming in terror. _

"_Only you could call it fun, Black. Now get out of my way", weariness and pain causing his words to sound harsh. _

"_I tell you one thing, Snape", the animagus whispered dangerously, gripping him by his injured shoulder and forcing him against a wall. Severus winced at the pain, hoping that the thick cloth would keep the wetness from Black´s hand. It would not do to be shamed in front of him, "I know your heart is in it still. You may redeem yourself all you want, you are a bloody Death Eater and will be for the rest of your life. I don´t care what the Headmaster thinks, but for me you will never be more than a heap of dirt."_

"_I will keep that in mind, Black", he whispered, his voice like silk hiding a blade of steel, "Count on it."_

_And to the kitchen he went, shivering with pain and a slowly rising fever, thinking only one though: The hardest thing about Black´s words was the knowledge that many of the Order would have agreed to his assessment._

Finally, the mad dance of images ended, and the soothing, warm fingers that were she withdrew from his mind. Returning to reality, he found her watching him, tears brimming in her eyes.

"Why…", she whispered, and he smiled at her, an open, affectionate smile that she had never seen on him before.

"You have a right to know", he answered simply, "Now – will you let me do my job?"

"And what exactly is your job?", her voice was still clouded by emotions, but there was no distrust left in it.

"Well, for now it contains getting you to my chambers in one piece, healing your wounds and offering you an excellent Spice tea from India", he said.

Her probing eyes revealed nothing but honesty and the wish to help. Something within her screamed that she should get away as soon as possible, that she was accepting a partnership she wasn´t even remotely ready for.

_He will try to control you!_, another part tried to argue, _He will try to stir you away from spying, and when you don´t comply, he´ll hurt you again!_

She considered turning him down, considered it long and hard. He made no move to convince her further.

But it was Snape. He was the most brilliant spy she had ever heard of. He had allowed her inside his head. He offered her help. And spice tea didn´t sound too bad.

"I think, I can let you do that", she nodded in acceptance. He saw tiredness creeping into her body, and offered her an arm to lean on.

Her eyes searched his face, as if she still couldn´t believe what had changed between them tonight, then she took his arm and let him support her.

0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o

A/N: Well, I promised to update, didn´t I? And there they are, walking back to the castle, arm in arm (sniff)… Unfortunately, there is no sunrise to add to the atmosphere, and night isn´t nearly over yet. Sorry about that, but you wanted it, didn´t you?

Thank you all for reviewing and for loving this story as much as I do. It helps me to go on when my inner laziness tries to take over…

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One word to the use of Whitman in this story. I do not share Severus´ sarcasm about the war poetry, although the idolization of fighting, soldiers and sacrifices is a very problematic thing – at least to my mind. As is blind (!) patriotism.

But I do love Whitman, and I think that the "Captain"-poem is one of the most moving pieces he has ever written. Which Severus is finding out unwillingly as well, isn´t he? Write to me if you disagree, I so love discussions about literature!

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Next chapter has long talks, Snape´s library (I love that setting!), and a lot of things you didn´t know about our dear protagonists in it. I promise you they will be at least temporarily happy for a change.


	16. Dancing the Distance

Dancing the Distance

Slowly, they walked towards the castle.

To his surprise, she hadn´t made a move to withdraw her arm from his support, but she kept her distance at his side. He was not one to chatter senselessly just to drive the silence away, and it seemed that her need for incessant talking had vanished over the years. Or perhaps she was just too weary.

When they had reached the outer edges of the rose garden, she turned to the right.

"We should circle the garden", she explained, "It´s popular with the students who have misplaced their brains, that is fallen in lvoe, and while one of us wouldn´t attract notice, we shouldn´t be seen together."

"The rose garden", he murmured interestedly, "Never found anyone there when I was on night duty."

"That´s because you probably don´t know the right openings in the hedges. I had the misfortune of being informed in exact detail about them by Padma Patil and Lavender Brown", she sighed, and brushed a lock of hair from her face, "I never understood those people who couldn´t wait for nightfall to sneak out of the castle. I´m happy every time I successfully manage to return to my room."

"Well, it seems that you´re doing something wrong, for the other students appear to enjoy their nightly adventures much more."

Severus could have slapped himself the moment those words had left his mouth. _Look at the state she´s in, and you´re giving her an overdose of your sarcasm!_

To his surprise, she started laughing. It was a hollow echo of the laugh he had once heard reverberating in the halls, but a laugh nonetheless.

"Any suggestions how to change that, Professor?", she retorted, "Perhaps if I brought a bottle of firewhisky to the next meeting. That would probably relax them all a bit."

"A pyjamas party perhaps", he proposed thoughtfully, "Who knows what they are wearing under those robes anyway."

She grinned at him, the idea of Voldemort in flannel pyjamas clearly amusing her.

They reached the door to the secret passageway, concealed by shrubbery and invisible even to those who knew of its existence. She drew her wand and tapped several stones while chanting the opening spell under her breath.

"Who told you about the secret door?", he inquired as he followed her into the tunnel, "Albus?"

"I read about it", she answered, "There´s an old copy of "Hogwarts – A History" that contains a map of secret tunnels and trap doors. Printed in the 18th century, with no more than 45 copies. Most of them were destroyed and the map banished from the next edition, but the Hogwarts library kept one."

"Remarkable", he said, imagining her browsing through the about 300 different editions of that book. She probably remembered every footnote that had been changed.

"Isn´t it?", she agreed, "And still there´s everybody telling me one cannot learn about the important things of life from a book."

He grimaced silently while he remembered the endless teasing and bickering that had gone on during his school years. His peers had felt the same way towards young Severus whose head seemed to be almost constantly buried in a book. Children didn´t change, it seemed.

"I should think your rather uneducated friends would have realized the usefulness of your brain by now."

"There´s nothing as short as a boy´s memory when the advantages of education are concerned", she said dryly, and he had to agree with that.

By the time they had reached his office Hermione was out of breath and strength, but doing her best to hide that fact from him.

She stumbled when she followed him through the tapestry, and he barely caught her before she fell.

"Do you require help with your injuries?", he asked, forcing his voice to complete neutrality.

"No, thank you", she answered hastily, detaching herself from him and watching him with renewed nervousness, "I will manage quite well."

He nodded silently and moved over to his desk, giving her a moment to reacquaint herself with his rooms. Memories assaulted him of the last time they had been in here together, and he supposed it was much worse for her.

After a minute or two, the rustling of her robes told him that she had begun moving again, unsure of where to go, and he turned back towards her.

"The room you stayed in the last time is yours now", he informed her shortly, "You can do with it whatever you want. I placed some floo powder on the mantelpiece, so you can contact the Headmaster if you wish. I have also taken the liberty to prepare a variety of potions for you, they are on your desk. You should find them of a much better quality than what you normally… borrow from Madame Pomfrey. Tell me if you need more."

"How do you know…", she asked hesitatingly, not wanting to affirm that she had indeed "borrowed" potions for months.

"I am responsible for the infirmary´s stocks", he answered, and again a warm smile played along his lips, "You hid your activities well, but I noticed the rearrangements of bottles. A good Potions Master always knows exactly what stocks there are, and how many of them."

"I didn´t want to take them, but I…", she started to explain, but he cut her short.

"The Headmaster should have thought of it. I will provide you with everything you´ll need from now on."

She nodded and walked over to the stairs.

"Thank you, Professor", she said hesitatingly.

"Severus", he corrected, with his face already turned back to his desk.

"What?"

The shocked tone in her voice caused him to look at her with amusement.

"Severus. Surely you know this is my first name."

"Yes", she stammered, confusion written all over her face, "But I…"

He waited for her to finish the sentence, but she seemed too befuddled to end it.

"I meant what I said, Miss Granger", he finally said, his expression that of mild amusement, "I offered you a partnership and a partnership it will be. In these rooms, you aren´t my student and I am not your teacher. We are equals. And equals usually refer to each other by their given names."

For a moment she didn´t react to this, and Severus wondered if she would simply bolt from his room to never return. Then, she nodded unsteadily.

"I will need some time for that, Pro… Severus", she said, ascending the stairs, "And it is Hermione, not Miss Granger."

0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0oo0oo0

_Well, that worked out nicer than I´d thought_, he mused while he watched her vanish from the lower level, _she tried to kill me only once_.

He made a short visit to his private kitchen, and then, sighing, sank into an armchair by the fire. After the effort of convincing her and her visit in his mind he failed drained.

Though she had responded surprisingly well to his plan, he had underestimated another major source for problems – himself. He wanted her to trust him, but could he bring himself to trust her?

Could he maintain the necessary patience to teach her and keep his rather unpleasant character traits at bay? He wasn´t one for coddling and caring – what if she wanted him to become all sentimental over her?

The Potter boy was a case like that, always expecting touching stories about his parents and declarations of pride. None of his adventures could end without a good deal of teary nonsense from everybody.

He was willing to work hard for this partnership, but he wouldn´t be able to play fatherly Albus for her. He shuddered with the thought.

_At least she has a sense of humour_, he reminded himself. That had been a relief. He wouldn´t have managed to keep sarcasm out of this for long.

Soft sounds informed him that Hermione had left her room again. She moved very quiet for one so young, normally, students were trampling around the corridors like elephants in hot pursuit. But he had the trained ears and eyes of a spy.

He had expected her to have taken a shower and look much better, and both was the case. What he hadn´t expected was the cool superiority with which she took the seat opposite to him, squarely met his eyes and plunged into a speech.

" I have thought, Severus", she started, and only a tiny hesitation accompanied the use of his name. She had probably practiced.

"If we want this to be a real partnership, there are some additional rules I want to establish."

So she was making rules already? Probably telling him how to treat her? This would be fun.

With a smooth gesture of his hand, he motioned her to go ahead, his face betraying nothing of his feelings.

"First: Secrecy. Of course, the Headmaster knows already about what **he** called our alliance´ just now when I talked to him, and Professor McGonagall will have to know, too. But with the exception of knowledge important for the Order, what happens between us will stay between us."

"Acceptable", he answered. Of course she wouldn´t want them to know her weaknesses and the finer details of her nights out.

"Second and Third – and these points are the most important ones – no mollycoddling. No pity."

Her could only stare at her. Had she read his mind again? Mistaking his confusion, she went on hastily, explaining her so called Point Two and Three.

"I´m a big girl and can handle pain quite well. I don´t need someone to tell me how brave and bad off I am, I need someone to keep me from falling to pieces or put those pieces together again. If I don´t want to talk about something, we won´t. No therapeutic sessions, no empathic nonsense. Teach me what I have to learn, tell me when I do something wrong, but if you offer me chicken soup or chocolate for the soul or whatever nonsense there might be, that´s it. And if I ever see something like pity in your eyes, something like "such a courageous girl, she should be rescued from her terrible fate", I will be gone and you´ll never see me again."

She nodded, as if to strengthen her words, "On these terms I will agree. But only on these."

Listening to her words, Severus felt as if a huge burden had been lifted. There would be no father figure Severus required. No late night talks about girl´s problems, no tearful confessions about her secret fears. Just two spies working towards a shared goal.

"I think I will find it quite easy to adhere to these rules", he nodded his consent.

"Good!", suddenly, she smiled, a mischievous smile that took him off-guard in its sincerity, "I would have hated to leave before the spice tea was served."

"It will be here in a moment", he grinned.

Silence fell, but it was a companionable silence neither of them felt the need to break. Then, Hermione let out a soft sigh and stretched her arms over her head, accompanied by the cracking of several bones. For a moment, she looked like a cat as she sat in his library, drinking in the sounds and smells and colours around her.

"I´ve quite come to miss your chambers, Professor", she said, eyes closed in an expression of deep contentment, "It´s so quiet here. And so peaceful."

He snorted to that, "It won´t be for long, depend upon it. Once Jane´s here…", A door clapped and he smirked, turning towards it, "Speaking of the devil…", he said.

"I heard that", a crisp and precise voice called through the open door, "And there´s only one devil living in these chambers, Severus!"

What appeared in the doorway with a tray of tea things was a small figure, clad in black robes. A house elf, Hermione realized, but only after a moment of utter confusion. For this house elf had nothing in common with the other members of this species she had known except the rather large ears and eyes and the green colouring of her skin.

"Jane", she asked, not sure if she could trust her voice.

"Yes", the house elf answered, set the tray onto the little table and arranged the small string of pearls that shone white against the black of her small robes, "I had one of those stupid elf names once, but I don´t hold with nonsense like that. Calling us like the stupid cousins of Tinkerbell and Mastering here, Mastering there has put us in the general mess we are in today."

Examining the rather speechless Hermione from head to toe, she turned to Snape and nodded sharply.

"So you finally did the right thing and brought the girl here. I wondered how much more time it would take you."

"Why am I surrounded by women who know everything better than me?", he asked with a scowl, but Hermione sensed a hint of amusement in his voice, "My parents should have sold you to the Malfoys!"

"And they should have sent you to Azkaban for a lesson in good manners!", she replied good humouredly, then turned back to Hermione and offered a small, green hand.

Hermione shook it uncertainly.

"I am glad to finally meet you, my dear. I took a look at you once or twice while you were asleep, but Severus thought it wise not to inform you of my existence. Few know I´m living here."

"Jane has chambers adjoining mine. They are connected by the kitchen", Severus explained, clearly enjoying the off-balanced state of his visitor.

"So you… work for him?", Hermione asked, gesturing to Snape, who had started pouring the tea.

Jane nodded, "In a way. I belonged to his family once, but they threw me out when my opinions concerning the relationship between house elves and wizards became too decided. When Severus started working here, he offered me the job. Good payment and easy work. The only thing he makes a mess off is his laboratory, and he cleans that himself."

"Thank you for that brief overview over my living habits, Jane", Snape cut in, "Will you take tea with us or am I spared your presence for tonight?"

"You´re off the hook, my dear. Evening classes", Jane answered, nodding good bye to the both of them, "Well, Hermione my dear, I expect we´ll be seeing more of each other very soon. I heard of your campaign, S.P.E.W. it was called, wasn´t it? We should have tea together and talk about the concept one of these days. It was a good idea, and with a bit of refinement…", waving a last time, Jane vanished through the kitchen.

"Evening classes?", Hermione asked him.

"She´s teaching young house elves. Reading, writing, the basics of history and politics", he explained, "They learn to ask questions and criticize", he smirked, "And when their parents try to take them into service, she comes over and frightens them to their bones."

"She´s a very strong minded person."

"She nearly died", Severus´ voice had lost all traces of humour, "Twenty years ago, wizards weren´t nearly as understanding in their behaviour towards nonhumans as today. She was sneered upon, starved and beaten. When I found her she was nothing but rags and bones, but told me with unbelievable dignity that she didn´t need my pity."

Only now, as Hermione leaned forwards in her chair interestedly, did he realize how close the two scenes resembled each other – that in the past, with Jane lying in the rubbish heap of some wizard´s village, and that of this evening, with Miss… Hermione´s acceptance of his support. He tried to think of a change of topics, but it was too late.

"And what did you say?", she asked, the darkness in her eyes indicating that she had noticed the parallels as well.

"I told her that I pitied nobody. It is one of the few principles I managed to keep over the years. And that in fact**I** needed **her** help, not the other way round. Which was and is true. I can´t stand the inquisitive house elves of Hogwarts, always popping in and out of rooms and convincing you to eat when you have other things on your mind. Jane leaves me to my affairs, as I leave her to hers. We manage quite well together."

She nodded thoughtfully.

"I´m glad she has other hobbies than just terrorizing me though", Snape remarked after a moment of quietness, "Otherwise, she would drive me quite mad."

She grinned to that, but didn´t answer.

"You haven´t tasted the tea yet", Snape noticed suddenly, "Although it was the main reason you followed me here, as you just confirmed."

"Not the only reason", Hermione said, her eyes twinkling, "There was also the access to your library."

He surprised her with a rich, deep laugh that washed over her like some warm, soothing summer breeze.

"Cunning as only a spy can be", he chuckled, "Well, the prize awaits you. Borrow whatever you like. I believe I won´t have to tell you about treating a book respectfully?"

"Not really", she answered, already up and moving towards the shelves. Her fingers itched with excitement as she chose a volume and opened it.

Silence followed as he watched Hermione immerse herself in his library. She had a hand for the more interesting titles, and soon she had assembled a variety of books that would provide reading material for at least a month.

"Choose a favourite seat and use the space around it", he proposed. She nodded, already piling the volumes in neat stacks around an old armchair that was upholstered with red brocade.

Caressing covers and spines, her fingers opened a small volume and softly stroked the yellowed pages.

"I will borrow that first, if I may", she said shyly, "It´s Sun Tse. I haven´t had the chance to finish it, and it was very interesting."

He nodded, his eyes never leaving her. Something in the atmosphere changed, and she felt the nearly forgotten nervousness resurface suddenly. She´d better go, she decided, before something would ruin the first pleasant evening she´d had in a very long time. But Severus wouldn´t just let her leave.

"Before you go", he said when she started to walk over to the tapestry, "Will you tell me why he was displeased with you over the last week?"

From one second to the other, the mask had reappeared on her face. Her fingers were clenching the book so tightly that the joints shone white against the slight tan of her skin.

"Who?", she whispered tonelessly, "I don´t know what you mean."

"Don´t insult my intelligence, Hermione" he said calmly, "If you don´t want to tell me, say so. But don´t try to lie to me."

Silence. Then her fingers relaxed around the book and she looked up to him, her eyes searching his and locking with them.

"How do you know?", she asked.

"I can see through glamour charms. Though yours were quite good given the circumstances."

"Oh…", her voice trailed away, lost in the deep of the night, "It´s all right", she said then and sat down on the sofa opposite to him, "I should get used to telling you if I want this to work."

She took a deep breath, not noticing that Severus´ face lit at her words. So she wanted this to work, did she?

"First, he was angry because of Harry and Ron. They are sneaking out of the castle all the time, taking unbelievable risks. They went to the Quidditch pitch one night, all alone. Voldemort found out."

"I suppose that is also the reason why your insufferable friends have ceased communicating with you?"

"They are not insufferable", she replied, but more out of habit than of conviction, "You noticed that, too?"

"It wasn´t possible not to notice it", he said dryly, "You´re not insufferable friends are rather the opposite of discretion."

She smiled, but the smile didn´t reach her eyes.

"I don´t know how to stop them", she confessed, "I have informed the Headmaster, but I can´t rush off telling him the moment they leave the Common Room. And I don´t think he took it as seriously as I do."

"So you didn´t tell him about the consequences of their little… adventure?"

"No. I…"

"I understand", he assured her quietly. It was hard to tell that merry old wizard about the darkness, the horror and the pain. He seemed to be made out of milk and sugar, a creature of light too pure for the shadows of twilight.

"I never told him either."

"You didn´t?", astonishment clouding her voice, "Then he never knew what…"

"Not exactly. It is hard enough for him without having to imagine the… details. Sometimes, knowledge makes it worse."

This time, the smile lightened her eyes.

"Should I quote that back to you during our next lesson?"

He smirked, "I´d deny everything, Hermione."

"Thought so", she nodded, and then her eyes wandered over to the magic exit, "I should go now. School tomorrow…"

"Of course", he agreed, feeling the nearness between them disappear again, "But before you go, tell me of the second thing that angered him."

She didn´t try to deny this time.

"He wants me to poison the traitor Snape."

Silence. She didn´t dare ask him to let her out and he was lost in thought, pondering her words.

"Well", he finally said, suddenly rising from his chair and leading her over to the tapestry, "Then you will have to poison me. I will give you detention tomorrow evening, so that we can talk. It will also give you a reason to slip something into my cup."

He placed his hands on the tapestry and whispered his password. Hermione noticed that it hadn´t changed since she had visited his chambers last.

"Till tomorrow, Hermione", he said, his voice like velvet, "Sleep well."

0o0

A/N: Tell me if you like Jane! Should she turn up more often or should she vanish into the writer´s bottomless drawer where the bad ideas are hidden? Lol

My excuses again for the long waits with replies to your reviews. They will come however, I love talking to you all! And for those who don´t leave a mail-address: Thank you so much for reviewing! Love you all :-)

Next update should take about a week, but don´t sue me if I take longer – college has started again, and I don´t even know yet how much work I have to do…


	17. Weddings and Stuff

A/N:

Now, before you get all irritated because I´m marrying off some of my characters, this is no new chapter! It´s not them who marry, it´s me (yay!).

Wonderful, isn´t it? I´m so happy I can´t tell you!

But – unfortunately for you – my happiness needs a lot of organizing and planning, so I won´t be able to update for at least two weeks or respond to your wonderful reviews!

I really hope you´re not angry with me! Just thought I should let you know!

All the best, be happy with me,

Kayly Silverstorm


	18. Planning the Future

Disclaimer: Nothing from the Harry Potter universe belongs to me and I intend no profit with this story. Jane is mine, houselves in general are – alas – not. What a pity.

Planning the Future 

School next day dragged along like an endless, boring Sunday with the family. Draco had no problems keeping up with the standard of the class, but he found it increasingly difficult to follow the monotonous lectures of his teachers.

He had given up on Arithmancy ten minutes after the lesson began, and he didn't even have an idea what Professor Binns had been talking about.

His mind kept spitting out thoughts, images and memories, and his eyes kept flickering towards Hermione.

She looked better today, her face had lost some of that sickly paleness, and her step had regained part of her old energy.

He, however, felt drained. The night before had brought a new letter from his father, and after informing the Headmaster and copying the letter for him, he had spent hours perusing it, scanning every inch of paper for hidden signs and every word for additional meaning.

Was he suspecting something? Planning something?

Every word from his father, every meeting with him threw him into a chaos of conflicting feelings. Fear, doubt, guilt and duty battled within him.

He knew he had been right to inform Dumbledore about the remaining contacts with his father, one and a half years ago, after the incident in the Ministry.

It had been the only possible thing to do when the letter, carried by a raven, had arrived that day. Informing Dumbledore – _betraying his father_ a voice inside his head would usually start whispering at this point at the argument – had been right.

But it still wasn´t easy.

And pretending to be on his father´s side, to enjoy his gruesome stories or share his belief in the natural superiority of pure-bloods was even more difficult.

He felt guilty every time he handed his father´s letter over - _betrayed him_ - , and even guiltier when he kept the masquerade going.

At this point of the endless circle of thought Draco found himself in, sleep would usually abandon him for the rest of the night.

Before the night in Dumbledore´s office, he´d sent Hermione a letter and they would meet somewhere, for she never seemed to sleep. Talk wouldn´t solve the problem, for the paradoxon of betrayal wasn´t something to be solved, but it would clear his head and allow him to go asleep somewhere around dawn.

This dawn found him wide awake in the Common Room, trembling with nervousness and frustration.

He felt that the screw had been turned around once more, increasing tension and pressure. The pace was quickening and he felt he was trailing behind, labouring hard but still unable to keep up with the others.

Perhaps that was why Hermione wouldn´t speak to him any longer.

At times like this, Draco wished that at least part of his old, mindless arrogance were still with him. Life had been so much easier then, with the world perfectly divided into what was worthy of his notice, and what was to be disregarded. Flaws in this wonderful clear picture of the world could be ignored, for how could his father ever be wrong? How could any of the old fools teaching at Hogwarts best his almighty, glorious father?

But then, after that night in the Department of Mysteries, everything had crumbled to the ground. Suddenly, the power and influence of the Malfoy family were as good as gone, only serving as a sort of half protection that kept Lucius from prison.

His friends and admirers had diminished, too. It seemed that Slytherin house hadn´t accepted him as a leader for his charm or intelligence, but because of his father´s power over their parents.

He was banned from the Quidditch team. His respect as a Prefect dwindled. Whispering voices mocked him in the Common Room.

Only after rage, hurt and the feeling of being betrayed had driven him for weeks had he finally realized that there were also other feelings lurking in the back of his mind. Relief. Freedom. Excitement.

For the first time in his life, Draco had been free of his father´s towering shadow. Free to become the person he wished to be. Free to question the principles and beliefs that had guided his whole life. Free to choose the people he wanted to confide in. Just as Hermione had said.

It had been she who had helped him through this phase of changing. She, and, in a strange and subtle way, Professor Snape. For after Hermione had told him about his Professor´s precarious double role as Death Eater and Order member, Draco had started to watch his Head of House. Soon he had noticed how masterly Snape played those roles.

He was dancing on the edge between to abysses, continually judging and evaluating every word, every move, every gesture for hidden meanings. Watching him, Draco had realized what power subtlety could bring, what difference the smallest details could make. And that one could learn to use this power for ones own advantage.

The clipped voice of Professor McGonagall cut into his thoughts and returned him to the presence.

"Today", she articulated precisely, "We will take another try with the Taming Charm."

General groaning answered her announcement. The spell was fairly advanced and had to be performed by a pair of wizards. It consisted of a stasis spell holding the wild creature while at the same time poisonous or other dangerous body parts were transfigured into their harmless counterparts and a charm to tame the creature´s wild nature was applied. If it wasn´t timed and coordinated precisely, the animal would break loose and inflict chaos on the whole class.

They had experienced their share of that during the last lesson, and were not looking forward to painful scratches and the chaos of enraged cats, miniature tigers or small snakes running wild.

"We´ll change the pairing today, however", McGonagall continued, "As you must be able to work the spell together with unknown partners. You won´t have the advantage of a trained friend during your exams…"

Ignoring the Professor´s well known speech about the coming NEWTs, Draco drifted off again.

He didn´t notice the pairing taking place and was startled when suddenly he felt a new presence beside him.

Looking up, he met chocolate brown eyes examining him intensely. Standing at his side, with a caged snake in her hands, Hermione smiled at him.

"Seems like McGonangall wants us to talk", she whispered, but there was nothing of the recent coldness and rejection in her voice.

"You probably disagree", he whispered back, failing to hide his bitterness.

Her smile vanished, and Draco regretted his words instantly.

"Draco", she said, and something in her tone told him that she had missed him, too.

"I hated to do that to you, but don´t you see that it was too dangerous for us to talk? I could have been discovered any day, and I didn´t want to risk your life as well. I can repress memories, but if they probed too hard, I perhaps couldn´t hide what was fresh on my mind."

He couldn´t let go of his anger that easily, but her words made sense. A terrible sense if he understood her correctly, for they told him that she had expected to be found out. To die. That she had given herself up, but had tried to protect him from the same fate.

"So what has changed?", he asked, trembling at her careless acceptance of her own end.

"Snape has taken me under his wing", she answered.

Draco frowned at her words, "What?"

"He obviously decided that I should be his new school project", she snorted, trying to maintain her cool indifference, but Draco could sense that there was more behind the mask of her face.

She told him the whole story while they worked together on the snake.

Unlike most of the other students, they didn´t need to fix all their concentration on the spell. They were a good team, used to interacting and communicating without words, and while he held the writhing animal in place, she applied the charms with the ease of a practiced auror.

"And how do you feel about all this?", Draco finally asked her, his eyes fixed on the snake.

He was relieved that Snape had finally taken action, for as willing as McGonagall and Dumbledore were, they were Gryffindors.

Very good with comforting and protecting, unrivalled in knowing what was right and what wrong. But Hermione was a sphinx, a queen of ice and shadows. In the complex maze that were her feelings and intentions, those people must be hopelessly lost. Too good to understand the workings of a scarily brilliant mind like hers.

Snape however… Draco hadn´t forgotten that moment of strange clarity, weeks ago, in Dumbledore´s office, when their competing profiles had stood against each other.

Snape was like an older Slytherin version of Hermione. Where she was ice, he was black stone, hard and unyielding, were she was fighting he stood in the shadows and directed the fight from the sideline. He was what she might become if she survived her dangerous game long enough.

Perhaps only he could understand her, although it hurt Draco to admit it to himself. Perhaps only he could rescue her.

"I don´t know", she answered, hesitation drawing the words long, "Somehow I´m glad. But it also makes me terribly nervous. I´m not very good in trusting, you know that", she grinned, and he answered with a smile that relieved her visibly.

"Not really", he agreed dryly.

She still smiled at him, "It´s good to speak to you again, Draco", she whispered, emotions suddenly clouding her voice. Then, something changed in her face and she became her brisk, efficient self again.

"Lessons nearly over", she said, "We should stage a fight before we miss the chance, shouldn´t we?"

And thus they spent the next ten minutes hissing, and bickering, throwing cold glances at each other and chuckling on the inside.

mMm

That evening, five minutes to eight, Hermione raised her hand and – after a moment of hesitation – brought her fist down onto the office door of her Potions Master.

He had scheduled her for group work with Neville, and had given her detention for his mistakes. For a moment she had considered not coming tonight, ending this partnership before it got too close, but when she had though about it, she found that something refused inside her.

She wanted to meet him.

She could have slapped herself for that feeling, but the last evening had been so peaceful, so… safe. He confused h er, true, but he didn´t force her to give more than she was willing to, and it had felt so wonderful to be nothing but herself for a change.

Dealing with people had become a strain over the last months. She had accepted that, had accepted it as completely as the necessity to change or to keep that change secret. But she hadn´t known how much she missed companionship. The presence of someone who knew her.

And know her he did. More than her so-called friends, more than her other teachers or Dumbledore. She had seen it in his face when he talked about the Dark Lord, or when he watched her built her little fence of books.

Not to forget that he was the most brilliant, fascinating man she had ever met.

And she knew him. More than he would ever know. He was…

The sound of the turning doorknob stopped her thought in its tracks. Better that way.

Of course it was Severus Snape who opened the door, she had expected that, but what she hadn´t expected was his rather informal attire. Instead of his usual flowing robes of black he wore nothing but a lose white shirt made of the finest linen and black trousers. Trousers that fitted rather tightly.

"You´re punctual", he commented as he stepped aside to let her enter.

"I always am", she replied levelly, "You should have noticed that during the last seven years."

"I did", his voice held the dry, sarcastic humour she had come to expect from him over the years, "But I also noticed that stating the obvious usually serves as a good way to open a conversation."

It seemed he was in a playful mood, and she found it easy to match his tone of sophisticated irony. Easier than to talk about what was lurking in the shadows of her thoughts.

"I do hope this is not an example of the wisdom you promised to pass on to me tonight", she teased back.

"Ungrateful already", he shook his head in exasperation as he led the way

Again, Hermione felt surprised of how natural talking to him felt. She had gotten used to a tight lipped, snapping teacher over the years. The relaxed, dry-humoured man he had turned into was quite a difference. She didn´t know whether she liked the change. That they were partners now didn´t mean she needn´t be careful around him.

There were still things she could unwillingly disclose, secrets she…

_Stop it!_, she ordered herself sternly as they reached his fake living room, _Keep talking._

"I guess one could call it a piece of art", she said while surveying the display of dreadful objects around her.

"Only if one was very generous", Snape replied with a smirk. Something in his voice told her that he knew she was trying to play brave, but had decided to let her be, "Come over here."

He led her to the tapestry and Hermione expected that he would once more open the secret passageway to let her pass. Instead, he used his wand to draw one very small and two bigger circles onto the tapestry. They shone bright red.

"Memorize these", he ordered, and she fixed the exact positions of those circles in her mind, suppressing the need to question him. He would tell her in his own time.

After about a minute, the three circles vanished without a trace.

"Now place your hands where the bigger circles were, and focus your eyes on the third one."

She followed the directions, pressing her palms against the smooth fabric of the tapestry. Severus chanted a spell under his breath, too quietly to make it out, and she felt a tingling sensation race over her skin, up her arms and through her whole body. For a second, she saw a bright light in front of her, as if she suddenly looked into the sun. Then the feelings subsided.

"You can lower your hands."

She couldn´t wait any longer, and when she opened her mouth he grinned, knowing that her curiosity had taken control.

"What exactly happened just now? I´ve never heard of a spell like that."

"I gave you full access to my chambers. The next time you touch the tapestry, it will accept a password from you. That will complete the spell and allow you to enter. I designed the spell myself and yes, it is really related to muggle techniques. You may close your mouth now."

It was true, the complexity of the spell impressed her, but what made Hermione stare at her Potions Master in wonderment was not his magical ability.

_I gave you full access to my chambers_.

She knew well enough what a private man he was. When she had been in his rooms for the first time, he had loathed her very presence there. And now he had let her enter his small paradise, had given her full access to his life. Just like that, without expecting a word of thanks. The man was driving her insane with contradictions.

She felt overwhelmed with the symbolism of this small gesture. He really wanted her to be a partner in full!

_How to repay him for this?_, she thought feverishly while he waited for her to choose a password and enter on her own for the first time, _How tell him how much this means to me?_

Suddenly, an idea seized her and she lifted her hands, placing them on the circles that she could only see in her memory. Fixing her eyes on the small spot in the middle, she raised her voice to the clear and precise articulation she used whenever travelling on the floo network.

"Rivendell", she announced and the tapestry suddenly blazed golden before returning to its usual, gloomy appearance.

She turned to Snape to ask him whether he wished to go first and saw in his eyes, dark and bottomless, that he had understood. She smiled at him, turned back to the tapestry, repeated the process and walked through.

A tray laden with tea utensils awaited her on the table near her newly chosen armchair. She rubbed her suddenly clammy hands against her robes and sat down, trying to get herself together again before he sat down opposite to her.

_Keep your mind on the task_, she ordered herself firmly and poured tea for the both of them, _Stop going sentimental this minute!_

When Snape took his seat, however, he spoke with the cool efficiency of a business man.

"There are a number of important things we´ll have to discuss tonight", he began, offering her a biscuit and, when she declined, taking his cup in both hands as if to bathe his hands in the warmth of the tea.

"First, we should tackle some technicalities. Practical, little things which can make your life much easier nonetheless."

He stopped and threw a short glance at her, as if expecting her disagreement. She just nodded, however, and sipped her tea, content to leave the initiative to him.

"Second, we should talk about your two main school problems: What to do with Draco, and how to deal with your two young Gryffindors. And last, there is the matter of my own severe poisoning to be discussed. Do you agree?"

"I do", she nodded, "But I must say that I´m more curious about this poison thing than about Draco, Harry and Ron. Leaving the best for the end?"

"In a way."

Again, he silently swept his eyes over her for a moment, as if expecting her to disagree. Then he began to explain his view on what he called the "technicalities".

"First, my chambers and your room. I meant it when I told you yesterday that the room upstairs belongs to you now. You can use it whenever you wish to. The same counts for the rest of my chambers. You may decide to establish a one-way floo connection to your Headgirl´s Room. I will also open the rest of my connections to you, though you hardly need it", he grinned dryly at her, remembering how she had coolly taken advantage of his slip after their quarrel.

"Second, I have an invisibility cloak that I will give to you", stifling her surprised protest with a gesture, he answered her before she could talk, "Yes, I know how expensive and rare they are, and yes, I expect you to take good care of it. But it will reduce the dangers of moving in and around the castle. I will show you a hollow tree I used as hiding spot when I made these travels. You can leave the cloak there before you apparate and collect it again afterwards. I´d propose that you meet me in my quarters after every revel. You should also inform me where you go and when. Leave notes on my desk. We can discuss a suitable code later."

"All of it sounds good to me", she nodded, "But don´t hold me responsible when the cloak is damaged."

"You should also decide how much to tell Dumbledore", he continued, too deep in organisation to match her light tone, "and the others who know. I will stick to your story, but you should inform me in detail to avoid slipping. We should get used to fully briefing each other anyway. I don´t want Minerva skinning me again because she encountered inconsistencies."

This time, it was Hermione who grinned, clearly amused with the idea of McGonagall cornering the much taller and stronger Snape and demanding "answers". She probably had no idea that Minerva had done exactly that some weeks before.

Then, her face grew sombre again and he noticed her brows drawing together as they did whenever she concentrated on something.

"I think we should inform them fully. I don´t want any… details leaving your rooms, of course", she added and he nodded his agreement, "But they would stop watching me with those worried eyes if they knew you took care of me."

There was a slight sneer in her voice, a strain that told him how much she hated these eyes and their questioning looks. He understood all too well.

"And would you…", she started, but then her voice died and she turned her head towards the window.

"Yes", he prompted, not sure what was bothering her suddenly.

"Would you give my reports to Dumbledore?", she asked in a small voice, hastily explaining herself when she noticed his startled look, "Only it´s so hard sometimes, sitting with him for hours, drinking chocolate when I just…"

Yes. He remembered. Sitting with Albus near the fireplace, drinking tea and smoothing over his reports, keeping things from him while behaving as innocent as possible. Putting on a show of strength while you wanted to curl into a ball and sob. His wise blue eyes piercing your soul and making you want to confess while you lied to him.

"I understand", he said, in a voice softer than she had ever heard from him, "I will be happy to do that for you, Hermione."

She met his eyes for a moment, relief turning her face younger.

"Thank you, Severus."

Silence embraced them for a moment and Severus didn´t break it.

"Concerning Draco", she continued finally, "I couldn´t decide yet. I told him not to worry and that you´re helping me this morning, but I still don´t feel happy confiding in him. All his father has to do is bring him before Voldemort and all will be out in the open. I´m working on it, though. Give me a week and I will have thought of something."

He nodded, glad that she had realized the danger herself. He would have hated keeping her from Draco, but the boy was a risk.

"What about Potter and Weasley?", he asked.

"What about them?" _Don´t go there_, her voice told him, but this was a point too important to ignore it, and she knew it well enough.

"You have to reconcile yourself with them", he cautioned.

She snorted, "A lesson in good manners? From you? Is the world coming to an end?"

"My manners are excellent", he replied haughtily, "It´s just that I learned over the years not to waste them on the wrong people. Students, for example."

"And fellow teachers and humans in general?", she couldn´t stop herself saying.

"Humans in general are not worth the effort. Neither are your friends", he answered, not allowing her to change the topic so easily, "But, unfortunately, you are tied to them by more than just friendship. The Dark Lord wouldn´t be pleased if he found out about your quarrell."

She sighed.

"I know. And I really want to. I miss them. It´s not their fault that I changed. It´s just that I don´t know how to explain…"

"I am neither willing to take part in the exculpation of your not insufferable friends, nor am I the right person to be consulted on questions of adolescent friendships", Severus cut in, not bothering to hide how little interest this subject held to him, "What I can do however, and did, is think of a way to keep them from endangering themselves and – more important – you."

"You did?"

"Should I take this astonishment as a very subtle insult?"

"If I decide to be subtle, you won´t even notice it", she retorted, refusing to take the bait, "What did you think of?"

"As you very well know, all of Hogwarts is surrounded by wards", he explained, clearly satisfied with himself, "They are all keyed in different ways, the castle admitting fewer people than the grounds etc. From his office, Albus is capable of controlling every single shred of information the wards collect. I did a bit of reading today and found out how we may use those wards to alert him and me whenever Potter and Weasley decide to take one of their nightly strolls. This way, we can control their movements and one of us can simply happen to meet them on their way out of the castle. Or, if I´m in a particularly nasty mood, I might decide to stay in bed and simply alert Filch."

"That´s brilliant", she breathed, the possibilities of this solution filling her with delight. They would be safe without her following them secretly. She could sleep again, not worrying about what they were up to. And she could stop lecturing them.

"I know", he replied smugly, "But it is nice of you to say so anyway."

The expression on his face suddenly reminded her of Ron when he managed to win an argument with her, and she couldn´t repress a laughter of pure amusement. Severus said nothing and concentrated on his tea.

He wouldn´t show her what relief this sound brought to him. He wouldn´t tell her how much he worried about her, how he had barely slept last night until this idea had crossed his mind. He had been glad when she had looked so much better this evening, and every sign of her returning health confirmed that he was on the right track with her.

"And now to the fun part", he finally said, a dark grin curling his lips, "Let´s discuss your deadly assault on a teacher."

"I thought you were making fun of me yesterday", she said, nervously trying to read his face.

"I wasn´t. You will poison me tomorrow, causing general panic and several cancelled potion lessons."

"It should look pretty realistic", she warned, still not sure what he was up to, "We must fool Madame Pomfrey after all."

"Don´t worry, it will look extremely realistic", he assured her, in a strangely satisfied way, "Using real poison will take care of that."

"What the hell..", she began, but before she could demand answers he gave them freely.

It wasn´t long until she joined his mischievous grin and they were plotting along together as if they had done it for years.

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A/N: There you are – I´m back and happily married!

Sorry for the long wait, but a wedding is even more work than I thought. But it was fantastic, and I can´t thank all of you enough for your congratulations and encouragements.

Concerning the story – I know this chapter was too much talk, but the organisation must be done, as recent events taught me, and the next chapter will compensate you for that.

"Staging a show" has the dramatic collapse of Snape, Harry and Ron, and a much happier Hermione in it. Should be up in about a week.

All the best to you all,

Kayly


	19. Staging a Show

Staging a Show 

The next morning dawned cold and grey. Storm clouds were hanging low above the roofs of Hogwarts.

When Hermione arrived for breakfast in the Great Hall, heavy raindrops were falling from the enchanted ceiling, vanishing in midair. Hermione was glad that the founders of Hogwarts hadn´t taken realism too seriously.

Potions was their first lesson on this Thursday.

When McGonagall had handed them their timetable at the beginning of the year, both Harry and Ron had groaned with the injustice of it: Two double sessions of Potions, one on Wednesday afternoon and one on Thursday morning. The last weekend too long gone for happy reminiscences, and the next one too far away for fond expectations.

It hadn´t mattered to Hermione then, but now she was glad about it, for it would have overtaxed her patience to wait even another hour.

She was so curious about his little show, and from his behaviour the evening before, she deduced that he was looking forward to it as well.

While she downed her porridge, she remembered the obvious pleasure with which he had laid out his plans before her, the mischievous glint in his eyes. It had surprised her that the cool and detached Severus Snape would plan his manoeuvre with the same excitement Harry and Ron would radiate when preparing a prank, but he was a master of disguises and acts, after all.

And a man. Men loved drama, although they usually didn´t admit it.

The bell wouldn´t have needed to remind her of class. She mixed with the group of Gryffindors and Slytherins on their way to the dungeon, watching Harry and Ron from the corner of her eye while all the way talking animatedly to Neville.

It had been a surprise for all of them when his OWLs had certificated him "Outstanding" Potions abilities, thus enabling him to attend the advanced course.

He had blushed and explained that he´d worked hard, and that „the examiner was rather interested in the botanical aspects of potions".

Good as he might have been in his exams, he continued to be an absolute catastrophe in class. Whether it was the holy fear of Snape that turned his hands clumsy and his brain dull whenever he entered the dungeons, or just years of bad habit, he still ruined nearly every potion and failed very nearly every test.

Severus, to whom Neville was his personal bane of existence, had thrown a tantrum when Neville appeared in his sixth year course. The Slytherins snickered every time he made a mistake.

But to Hermione, he was a loyal friend.

Most of the Gryffindors had taken Harry´s and Ron´s side after the quarrel, sending her reproachful or disgusted glances and avoiding her.

They had never fully accepted her, she knew that. She had always been too keen, too brilliant and too scary.

There had been bad phases with Harry as well, granted, but he had always been one of them, no matter what he´d done or they believed he´d done.

A true Gryffindor.

She however had never fully belonged to them. Her discipline was too Hufflepuff, her thirst for knowledge too Ravenclaw, and during the last months, she had come to consider herself more Slytherin than anything else.

Only Neville treated her as if all this didn´t matter. He was thankful for all her help with homework and potions, and felt more than a bit guilty that he had caused her detention the night before.

She liked him. And he was her only means of communication with Harry and Ron these days.

Now, while Neville recounted some story he had heard from Padma and Parvati, she let her eyes linger openly on her two former friends.

Ron looked away the moment he noticed it, but Harry met her gaze, his green eyes full of sadness, reproach and disbelief.

„They are still very angry with you", Neville whispered, noticing the objects of her attention as she had meant him to, „They think you´re success has gone to your head and that you believe you´re better than them. I don´t believe that, though", he added quickly and nervously.

He had no interest in a tongue lashing form her.

„I know, Neville."

She sighed, letting some of the worry she felt creep into her voice and face.

Neville´s eyes grew wide at her tone. Suddenly, she didn´t sound like the Hermione he knew, but like an old woman, tired and worn out. Like his Grandma after one of their visits to the hospital.

„I hope they´ll forgive me one day. I´ve tried to talk to them, but they just go away. I wish they´d just listen to me."

_That should do the job_, she thought, satisfied with the grave expression in Neville´s face, _He´ll tell them as soon as possible. First step accomplished_.

They had reached the classroom and barely taken their places when Severus rushed in, his black robes billowing dramatically.

From his position behind the teacher´s desk, he scowled at them all.

„Prepare this potion and bottle it", he snarled, tipping the board with his wand. Immediately, white writing appeared on the black slate.

"Until next week, I expect you all to write a twelve inch essay about the properties of this potion and the specific problems concerning its storage. Begin."

Used to this routine by now, they started to gather ingredients and instruments quietly.

Severus sat down at his desk, reading some essay. His long, slender fingers were playing with the carafe of water that stood on his desk as usually.

Watching him, Hermione gripped her knife harder, her knuckles whitening with the pressure.

This carafe was the centre and pivotal point of their plan. Severus always kept it on his desk, along with a glass goblet he used to drink form.

He had told her yesterday, when they had visited the classroom and surveyed the stage for their plan, that he had placed strong charms on both to prevent exactly what they were planning now.

But nobody else knew about these charms, and if someone would question the safety measurements of the Potions Master, he could always pretend that months without threats and spying had made him careless.

They had removed the charms yesterday, and poisoned the water with the crushed berries of hemlock.

She felt she would scream if she had to wait any longer, but still she chopped and cleaned, letting only a slight tremble of her hands and a certain rigidity of her back show for those invisible observers in the room that might watch and evaluate.

The traitors in their ranks should tell the Death Eaters in their next reports that she, Hermioe Granger, had obviously known something would happen.

Then, after ten more minutes of silent waiting, Severus took the goblet in his hands and Hermione stopped all pretences of work.

Just as they had planned yesterday.

He raised the goblet to his lips and drank two thirsty gulps.

Then he stood, leaving the crammed space behind the des. His performance would be much more impressive this way.

For one heartbeat, their eyes met, chocolate brown driving into velvety black, and a tiny smile graced his lips.

She looked away. She heard the clattering as the goblet escaped his suddenly weak fingers.

"Class dismissed", he croaked, his voice such a ghastly parody of his normally silky tone that all heads whipped around, watching him in surprise and horror.

"Get out I said", he now yelled, reaching for his throat with trembling hands, "Out! All of you!"

Then, in a flutter of robes, he collapsed.

This was her clue. In a moment´s time, she cleared her face of all worry or interest, all human feelings. It became a mask of pure cruelty and loathing as she sneered down at the writhing Potions Master.

Any unsuspecting watcher might wonder about this strange expression, but would probably believe that Severus had been especially nasty during detention and dismiss it from his thoughts.

Traitors however would take it as a hint and identify her as the cause of Severus´ pain.

And in pain he was, obviously.

His hands fletched, clawing at the stone floor to stop the tremble that had seized his whole body.

"Betrayal", he grunted, agony in his voice, "They try to murder me… Voldemort, you bastard!"

Hermione´s eyes met Draco´s which were wide with worry. He looked at her in consternation when he saw the expression in her face.

"Hermione, do something! You´re Head girl", Neville whispered, confusion and fear turning his voice hoarse.

In the safety of her mind, Hermione nodded. This was long enough to let unknown watchers draw the right conclusions.

Abandoning her cold stare, she snapped into action.

"Quiet, everybody", she snapped, feeling the authority of the Head Girl settle around her shoulders.

"We must get him to the infirmary" Malfoy, help me. Neville, inform Dumbledore this instant. The others: out with you. Quickly!"

Dazed by the sight of their normally towering Professor, now jerking on the floor, only half conscious, sent them running.

"Mobili corpus", Hermione whispered, pointing her wand at Severus.

Slowly, his body floated upwards and followed them as they broke into a run for the infirmary.

"What exactly happened just now, Hermione?", Draco asked while trying to keep up with her, "What´s the problem with him? And why did you took like that?"

"I´ll explain later, Draco", she answered shortly, keeping her eyes on Severus, "just act worried. And as far as you know, I hate him."

Draco didn´t understand a word, but, having learned that Hermione always had a reason for such requests, he nodded and sped alongside her.

They reached the infirmary in record time. With a mighty push, Hermione shoved the door open and rushed inside.

Carefully, she laid Severus down on a bed, all the while calling for Madame Pomfrey.

When the nurse appeared, she had to stifle a shocked shriek. The Potions Master looked dreadful.

He was soaked in sweat that had soaked his hair and dampened his robes. His mouth and throat worked hard, but he made no sound. Panic stood in his wide open, staring eyes. Apart from the twitching muscles of his face and throat, not a part of his body moved.

"What happened?", Madame Pomfrey whispered, and Hermione could see how she pulled herself together and took on an air of professional efficiency.

Hermione started to explain the incident in the dungeons, wringing her hands, sobbing and on the whole acting like a teenage girl that had just experienced a teacher´s collaps.

By the time she had finished her report, Dumbledore had rushed in and she had to repeat everything over again.

Only then, as Dumbledore and Madame Pomfrey put their heads together and whispered worriedly, did she have time to observe Severus´ state more closely.

She knew what he was imitating – he had told them about poisonous hemlock in class more than once. Unbearable burning in the mucous membranes – especially the mouth – was followed by sickness and diarrhoea. This wouldn´t happen to him, though, for he was imitating a deadly poisoned, who would be paralyzed from the feet upwards.

Most victims of such a poisoning died within the hour, their body and breathing completely paralyzed, while they remained fully conscious and in pain.

It was a terrible death, and terrible to look at. They had chosen hemlock because Severus' resistance against this poison was best, and also because it fit into the logic of Voldemort.

But watching Snape´s horror stricken face, his shallow breathing and pained efforts to speak, she found his imitation too realistic to her liking.

Either he was a better actor than she´d thought, or he´d lied to her and really was in pain now.

But he wouldn´t do that, would he?

He had been so convincing the evening before, when he had explained to her how he´d developed a resistance against certain poisons over the years. It came naturally with being a Potions Master, especially a Death Eater Potions Master, he had said. He´d just taken little amounts of the poison regularly and increased the dose whenever he hadn´t felt any reactions anymore.

"Taking it means nothing more to me than a slight indigestion, while to the rest of Hogwarts it would look like a deadly assault. All those shocked, poor students will have nothing better to do than run around the castle and spread the news, and the gossipy Madame Pomfrey will finish our job. Three hours later everyone at Hogwarts will know what happened and in two days, the whole wizarding community will be informed. I´ll have nothing to do but lie low in my quarters for a few days and enjoy my spontaneous holiday."

She had believed him then. But now it looked like they had terribly miscalculated.

Slowly, taking care that neither Dumbledore nor Madame Pomfrey noticed it, she approached Severus´ bed.

Dumbledore knew of course about their plan and was playing along nicely, but she felt nervous showing him what had developed between her and her Potions Master.

She didn´t want to show anybody that she had started to care about this strange, brilliant man.

She waited until Madame Pomfrey had bustled out, in search for some potion, and Dumbledore had turned his back on her, talking to Draco. Then, she softly placed a hand on Severus´ shoulder.

"Are you all right", she asked in a whisper that sounded too breathless to her liking, "You look terrible!"

He opened one eye and grinned at her, all the pain and suffering suddenly gone from his face.

"I´m having the time of my life", he answered mockingly, "Don´t disturb me!"

She grinned back, relief washing through her like a huge, soothing wave, and watched as he resumed his pitiful posture.

She didn´t mind when Madame Pomfrey ushered her and Draco out not a minute later.

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When she entered the Gryffindor common room, she was greeted by a storm of questions.

The earlier anger of her House mates was forgotten as they flocked around her, asking for gruesome details and diagnoses.

She answered them as shortly as possible without being rude, then shoved through the crowd, searching for Harry and Ron.

They sat on their favourite sofa by the fireplace, craning their heads to find out what was going on while at the same time pretending not to be interested at all. They turned their heads away when she walked towards them, but at least Harry´s posture seemed less stiff than an hour before.

Neville had obviously talked to them already.

She stopped in front of t hem, not saying anything, not meeting their eyes.

Just waiting. They had to take the initiative if this was going to work.

Finally, Harry broke the silence, "What happened to Snape?", he asked, his voice as cool and disinterested as the emotional Harry could manage.

She flashed him a smile that was dazzling in its brilliance and started to tell them of the "dramatic events"

Still she stood, however, refusing to sit before the permission was given.

"I´m so glad you´re talking to me again", she finished her story and added a trembling lip and a slight quiver to the words.

Again, silence enveloped them.

"Oh do sit down, Hermione", Ron sighed finally, "Don´t stand there like a convict to be judged!"

Se let herself collapse into an armchair opposite to them.

"When I was with my parents a few weeks ago", she plunged into another story without explaining its relevance to Harry and Ron, "They were completely different from how I´d known them to be."

The story was purely fictional of course – she hadn´t met her parents since last Christmas – but she hoped it would tell Harry and Ron what they needed to know without her having to spell it all out to them.

"As you know, my mother was badly injured and my father was in a state of shock. As soon as I arrived there, they started to put pressure on me. I shouldn´t go back to Hogwarts, they told me, and I should keep away from danger – that is, in their perspective, from you", she flashed both of them an apologizing smile.

"I felt so bad and guilty knowing that I was the reason for the attack – you probably know that feeling, Harry. But at the same time they were so different! Half the time they were worrying themselves sick about me, the other time they were nagging and complaining that I shouldn´t take any risks."

Their faces had changed while she talked. In Harry´s eyes she saw understanding and a feeling of guilt surfacing. Perhaps he remembered his behaviour after Sirius had died, when he had pushed them away and clung to them at the same time, admonishing Ron to never take any unnecessary risks again.

Ron was taken aback. He seemed to believe that he´d misjudged her badly.

She was satisfied with herself so far and took a deep breath. Now the main part, the part that was real and therefore the hardest.

"I´m sorry that I treated you the way I did", she continued, her voice so full of emotion that it threatened to break.

"But you always think that I´ve everything under control, that I could never crack like you two do from time to time. But when I came back to Hogwarts and saw you, all I could think was What I they die? What if I make a mistake and they´ll pay? What if I die and they´ll suffer like my parents?´ I couldn´t think straight, I just…"

Her words ended in a whisper and broke off. To her surprise she felt honest tears burn hot trails down her cheeks.

She closed her eyes and turned her face away. If that wouldn´t do it, she didn´t know what would.

For a while, nothing happened and she wondered whether she had miscalculated after all.

Then, she felt two pairs of strong arms enfolding her, and she sobbed into Harry´s t-shirt.

"You´re one of us, ´Mione", Ron´s voice whispered into her ears.

"Yeah", Harry added, "Crack up all you like, Hemrione, we´ll help you put the pieces back together.

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A/N: Yay! I promised you a chapter and here it is – hope you´ll like it!

Hemlock is a poisonous plant that grows all over Europe. The poison was often used as a means of execution – its most famous victim is Socrates, who was sentenced to death by the people of Athens.

I forgot to explain Rivendell at the end of the chapter, though it probably isn´t necessary. Anyways: Rivendell is the home of Elrond the wisest of elves in Tolkien´s "Lord of the Rings". To Frodo and his companions it is a place of safety, of healing and of beauty, but also of counsel.

Next chapter will contain some vital information about the plot – yes! I do have a plot!

Thanks again to all those who reviewed – if I haven´t answered you by now, I haven´t got your address or the email was returned to me for some reason.

All the best,

Kayly


	20. The Show Must Go On

The Show Must Go On 

"I just came to tell you that there´ll be a meeting in half an hour", Hermione said, examining Severus nervously. He was lying on a sofa, his head resting on pillows high enough so that he nearly sat upright. A blanket of dark red satin was tucked tightly around him – by Jane´s loving hands, Hermione supposed.

He was still very pale, his forehead feverish, and his eyes were dark holes in their sockets, circled with black.

"Lucius wrote to me, he says the Dark Lord is very pleased… Are you sure you´re all right?"

"Perfectly", his velvety voice was hoarse from all the shouting and groaning, but the smile on his face was warm, though mocking as always.

"You should stop caring so much about other people, Hermione, or you´ll never become a master spy."

"Perhaps I don´t want to become one if it means stopping to care", she answered quietly, and something in her eyes told him that she didn´t believe his assurances.

"Then what do you want?", he asked, not really thinking she would answer.

She surprised him.

"To end this war with as little bloodshed as possible", she said, and the intensity of her words burned in her eyes, "To get close enough to Voldemort to put my plan into practice."

"What plan?", she had spoken of this before, but never in a situation when he could have asked her what she meant, "How do you want to prevent the great stand off between Potter and the Dark Lord everybody is expecting?"

"By making Voldemort believe I can give Potter to him – alone, without an army in his back, without any risk. In a place where nobody would notice it if he vanished and at a time when the ancient magic is most powerful. If Voldemort trusts me enough to believe in that, he will come with only his Inner Circle, prepared to finish Harry of. He won´t be prepared, however, to find the whole Order waiting for him and we can get him without a long drawn battle."

"How do you want to explain Potter venturing out at Midsummer night, Christmas or Haloween? And how do you want to defeat the Dark Lord on such a night?", Snape asked, his voice and face absolutely expressionless.

He didn´t want to tell her that this big plan of hers was madness, that there was no way, no way at all to make Voldemort believe in such stupidity from Harry Potter. Idiotic as the boy was, he knew as well as every other wizard about the power that lay in the air and earth on such a night. He also knew that Voldemort was mastering these powers, and would be nearly invincible at such a time.

His whole body ached with disappointment. He had always believed her brilliant, equipped with unusual rational and logical powers. Now she turned out to be raving mad.

"Don´t give me that stony face, Severus", she admonished him with an ironic smile, "I know well enough what you think – that I lost my mind or never had one."

Surprisingly, her words held none of the anger or resentment he had expected. She sounded more… amused.

"But you do agree that – apart from those two problems – the plan is a valid one?"

"Apart from them, the plan is brilliant", he agreed unwillingly, his voice rough, "But you can´t overcome those two! You will simply sacrifice Potter or – worse – the whole of the Order to your mad idea! You can´t defeat Voldemort on a night when his powers are the strongest! It´s absolutely impossible! I have seen what he can do on a night like Halloween!"

Again, a small smile played around her lips as she listened to his agitated words.

"There is an old ritual, called the "mating" that I read about in the restricted section", she explained, ignoring his confused expression, "It gives its participants the ability to connect in their minds. They will always know where the other mates are, whether they are in danger or any pain. With a little training, they can even communicate through their bond."

His face told her clearly that he hadn´t got the slightest idea what this had to do with anything, but still she smiled and continued.

"There is one drawback, however. To function properly, the mating ritual has to be performed on one of the ancient nights at a place that holds special magical properties. A risk. The benefit, however, is enormous. And isn´t it a wonderful symbol – me, Harry and Ron bonding like that after school´s finished? Gryffindor´s love symbolism, and this one must be irresistible to Harry."

Something in Severus´ face softened as her words were beginning to make sense. So she´d thought this through, at least, and come up with something believable.

"A perfect bait, granted", he agreed hesitatingly, "And I would believe your friends capable of risking their lives for some idiocy like that. But that still doesn´t change the fact that Voldemort is quite invincible with the ancient magic under his control."

"So what if I tell you", Hermione asked now in a voice that sounded gloating, "That I found a place where the ancient magic doesn´t work?"

Severus gaped at her openly.

"Impossible", he said, but it nearly sounded like a startled yell, "Earth magic and air magic are everywhere, you can´t control or banish them! This is madness, Hermione!"

"It isn´t", she replied in a determined voice, "I did some research in the library and found out…"

While she spoke, her eyes had fallen on the huge clock that stood in his library. She faltered, sighed and then shook her head.

"There´s no time left for that. Accio books!"

Hurriedly, she moved over to the window and opened it. Not a second later, a pile of books dashed through the window and into her arms, the impact making her stagger and nearly fall.

"Here", she said and handed the pile over to him, "That´s part of my research material. Be assured that I tested everything to my satisfaction. Read and tell me whether you came to the same conclusions as I did. I have to go. I´ll come back here after the meeting."

And before he could answer or comment on this rather abrupt end of communication, she had swept up the winding staircase, no doubt using the floo connection to return to her Head Girl´s room.

MmMmMmMmMmMmMmMmMmMmMmMmMmMmMmMmMmM

Slightly dazed, Severus looked after her. What was it with that woman and dramatic exits?

He gathered the books in his lap and grunted with pain as one poked his stomach.

He hadn´t told her – though she´d probably noticed anyway, after all, this was Hermione – but the poisoning had affected him more than he had admitted. To make his plan work, the dose of hemlock would have to be more than deadly, and such amounts of poison were dangerous even to him. But the risk had paid off.

When Minerva had visited him this afternoon, she had spoken of rumours filling the school. Already, there were whispers about a dose high enough to kill "even an elephant". He loved calculable people, and Madame Pomfrey was one of the worst.

Rather unmotivated, he started to leaf through the books, concentrating on the passages and chapters she had marked.

He found out which place she´d talked about soon enough, but took his time to check that his suspicion really was right. It was

Hell and damnation, she could´t be serious about this!

Tintagel?

Tintagel, of all places!

There hardly was a place more ancient and powerful than that one! Even the muggles knew about its properties! Only Stonehenge or that meadow near Canterbury would have been worse choices. What the hell had she been thinking?

Behind his back, a door clapped shut. He tensed automatically, prepared for an attack or unwelcome visitors, but relaxed again when he distinguished Jane´s mincing steps.

"You still look awful", her dry voice commented a moment later, "Didn´t everybody tell you to rest? Really, Severus, you´re the most hopeless romanticist I´ve ever known, poisoning yourself just to make a girl happy! What are you reading again?"

He shut the books and placed them on the table beside his sofa, only now noticing his fatigue.. Perhaps he really should care more about his health.

_I´m getting too old for this_, he thought. Then he sighed and returned his attention to the house elf that was looming over him critically.

"Oh, do sit down, Jane! My neck is hurting already!"

"Serves you right. Now you know what it feels like when you´re hovering over me all the time", but still she sat down and took one of the books.

"Magical places in Great Britain?", she read out loud, "Really, Severus, what are you up to now?"

"Just checking some of Hermione´s research work", he explained, "I think she´s gone mad finally."

"Your influence no doubt", Jane said compassionately.

"Charming as always, aren´t you?", he snorted.

"I´m doing my best. Why do you think she´s mad?"

"She has finally disclosed that "big plan" of hers, and it turns out to be some cock and bull story about places where the elemental powers do "not work". Even worse, she believes that Tintagel is one of these places and that we might therefore defeat Voldermort there on a Halloween´s night."

Jane watched him, unmoved. He had long ago given up on explaining more to her than he would to a colleague. She was thoroughly educated – more than most wizards these days – and she hated it when anybody took her for stupid just because she looked like some oversized Disney toy.

"So what?", she finally asked when it was clear that he had finished.

"Jane!", Severus cried, exasperated, "Do I really have to explain this? It´s one of the oldest settlements in Britain – people have been fleeing to it for centuries, magical creatures sought refuge there. Tintagel´s earth is filled mit magic, its air is vibrating with power. Everyone who goes there can feel it! So it´s madness if Hermione believes that this place of all might be the solution to our problems."

He sighed, and raised his hand to rub his tired eyes, "Honestly, I don´t know how to convince her that this is madness. She really believes in it, has placed all her hope of ending the war on this plan."

"But she´s absolutely right about it", Jane replied, unmoved as always by his emotional outbreak.

"What? Have you gone mad, too?"

"Now really, Severus! There´s no reason for that sort of tone."

"But you said…"

"I said that Hermione is right. What a clever girl! No wonder she fought for the rights of the house elves."

Noticing his expression of growing irritation, Jane sighed and bowed forward, her knobbly hands folded in her lap.

"All of you wizards, even you, forget that non-human magical persons do have a culture, memory and history of their own. There are things between heaven and earth, Horatio, that are only open to giants, centaurs or house elves. Our peoples have always known that there was something special about the place you call Tintagel. We explain it differently, but with the same results."

"But you fled there in times of darkness", he started to protest, but she cut him short.

"We fled there **because** Tintagel was free of elemental magic. When dark wizards threatened us, we gathered there **because** our power would exceed any human´s there, what with us unable to tap into the reserves of earth and air. The power you talked about, the power filling earth and sky, is no power of the elements. Its our power, lingering there from the countless times magical creatures used Tintagel as a hiding place. You wizards and witches never noticed the difference though. And we always made sure you wouldn´t find out.

"But that girl discovered it nevertheless", she continued, with pride in her voice, "I wonder if we could elect her an honorary member to the house elves."

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It was shortly after eleven o'clock when he heard her signal. He had told her about the magical connection between his chambers and his office door – everyone knocking at or even standing near that door could be observed through the tapestry, and a sound made down there would echo through his chambers to make sure he reacted promptly.

This signal, consisting of a complicated series of knocks, hadn´t been his idea, but he was glad she had proposed it. There were still situations he definitely didn´t want to share with a teenaged student, brilliant or not.

She followed her knocks only moments later.

"He was pleased", she told him instead of a greeting, "Do you feel better?"

Brushing away her question with a gesture of his long, slender fingers, he leaned forward to give her face a closer examination.

"Not pleased enough to let you go without a good beating", he remarked grimly.

"The Death Eaters took care of that", she replied. She raised a hand as if to hide her bruised lips and eye, but suppressed the impulse nearly immediately, "They made sure I wouldn´t get airs."

She smiled, but it was a smile without warmth in it, "He was pleased indeed. Let me sit by his throne throughout the whole meeting. He even patted my head once or twice."

"Sounds like an exalting experience", Severus said. It was risky, joking with her at such a time, but dark, evil humour had always helped him over the lurking abyss of despair, and it seemed to do her good as well.

As the idea of a pyjamas party had done, his comment made her smile, "Definitely. I´ll be writing it into my diary in a second. Just let me take a shower before."

He nodded and watched her ascend the stairs. For a moment, his mind lingered on the problem of jealous Death Eaters and Lucius Malfoy, but his thoughts kept wandering back to Tintagel at the night of Halloween. He still pondered what he had learned about her plan when he heard her return.

"Jane has confirmed your hypothesis about Tintagel", Severus thus told her the moment she re-entered the library.

"I had hoped so", Hermione simply nodded, pouring herself a cup of tea and letting herself fall into a chair opposite to him.

She looked tired and worn, as if the close contact with Voldemort had hurt her in a way no potion could heal, but his exasperation with her outweighed his caution for a moment. First Jane, and now she. _Know-it-alls_, _all of them_. He chose to ignore the fact that his irritation stemmed from the fact **he **hadn´t known better.

"Don´t tell me you knew about the magical creature´s use of Tintagel, because I won´t believe that, Hermione!", he exclaimed.

She shook her head, "I didn´t know. But I was relatively sure", she continued, causing him to groan in frustration.

"I found a footnote in one of that books – you probably overlooked it."

As if he could have worked through all those volumes in barely three hours and evaluated every footnote, he thought exasperated.

Hermione had opened one of the books and leafed through it, obviously in search of the lost footnote.

"Here", she finally said triumphantly and pointed to the bottom of a page, "It says here that in times of darkness, unusual amounts of magical creatures could be found living in the caves below Tintagel.

"That made me wonder why intelligent creatures like centaurs or house elves should flee to a place where wizards and witches are most powerful, especially at the ancient nights. Different from humans, they can´t tap into those reserves of power granted by nature. Places with elemental power would thus be even more dangerous to them than the rest of Britain.

"I cross-checked that with several studies on books about magical creatures, but I was only allowed to borrow a certain amount of volumes from the library. Unfortunately, the librarian is very strict about that rule."

She looked irritated for a moment, even angry that library rules had hindered her research, but then returned to her explanation.

"Anyway, I found a series of testing spells that could confirm the nature of magic in a confined area – whether it came from wizards, magical creatures or the elements themselves. During school holidays, I visited Tintagel and ran a series of experiments, which confirmed my hypothesis. I returned there on the eve of Halloween and repeated the procedures. All tests confirmed that there was no elemental magic found in that place, not a tiny bit. And that´s what I based my plan on."

Listening to her explaining a research project that would have taken grown scientists years, and that she had followed simultaneously with school and her new profession as spy, Severus felt a strange feeling of awe rise inside him.

"That was extraordinary work, do you know that?", he finally interrupted her.

To his surprise and immense delight, she blushed a deep red and lowered her eyes.

"I´m doing my best", she whispered, "So does that mean you think it might work?"

"It very well might", he replied absently, thinking how they had never even considered making the first move.

"We have always concentrated on defending ourselves", he said slowly, "and never thought of striking back. Our aim was to minimize danger to the wizarding world. And all of those romantic fools were far too infested with the idea of a hero, a chosen one that would rescue us from Voldemort. But this might be an alternative to waiting for salvation", he continued with growing fascination, "In fact, this might even be much better!"

They discussed her plan and its details, and Snape was so thrilled with its potential that he didn´t even think of sending her to bed until he saw that her hands were trembling with exhaustion.

"You must be tired and hungry", he realized, taken aback by his own carelessness, "Let me get you something to eat."

"No…no…thank you!", she refused, surfacing from her deep thoughts and suddenly alert again, "I´d better leave."

The sudden fear in her voice made him stop in his tracks and eye her closely.

"You´d have to walk down to the kitchens to get something to eat at this hour", he said, a dark suspicion clouding his mind.

"No, I´m not hungry", she protested, trying to hide her trembling hands from him, "I really have to go, Severus!"

She stood, but he stepped into her way.

"You aren´t well, Hermione."

"But I am", desperation shone in her eyes, "I just need to rest!"

Sadness descended on him. She still didn´t trust him, but what had he expected after so short a time?

"Why didn´t you tell me about the cramps, Hermione?", he asked softly. He had to tread carefully or she would bolt from his chambers to never return.

"You know about them", shocked brown eyes met his black ones.

He sighed.

"I´ve been a Death Eater for years", he said patiently, "Do you really think I was never punished by the Dark Lord?"

"No – I know you were…", she was confused, and Severus used this moment of insecurity to lead her back to the sofa.

"I know nearly everything about the Curse and its after effects. Damn it, Hermione, that is the reason why you´re here, because I know more about this than you and might help you! Why don´t you trust my knowledge and experience, if you can´t trust me?"

Self reproach filled his mouth with a bitter taste. How could he have forgotten those cramps, the evil little by effects of Voldemort´s most beloved curse? Writhing at his feet while Cruciatus´ pain filled every vein, every muscle and sinew was bad enough, but feeling its effects long after you were back in your chambers and had relaxed in the belief of safety, that was cruelty beyond end.

"I tried everything against them", she suddenly rushed to say, as if trying to justify herself, "Nothing worked! No potions, no charm, not even muggle medicine."

He imagined how desperate she must have been to fall back on the plump and mostly useless medicines that were made without magic.

"How long since they started?", he asked quietly, refusing to let his anger show. His anger with her for not trusting him, and with himself for not foreseeing this.

"About two months."

"Then the cramps must be still bearable. Painful, but you probably haven´t fainted yet because of them?"

"That´s right", she answered in a small voice, "But sometimes I wish I would. They are just so…"

He nodded to that, and she fell silent.

"There is something that helps", he told her, noticing that the tremble had spread from her fingertips to her hands and was now taking hold over her whole body, "First of all, take care to relax after the meetings. Emotional stress will worsen the cramps and make them come sooner. The moment the pain starts, you must locate its origin in your body and", he hesitated for a moment, knowing how this would sound, "produce a shock in that body part. Hit yourself with a fist, use your furniture or the wall. It must hurt badly, and create enough pressure that the starting cramp is stopped."

He had said it in a rush, perhaps to get it over with, and only now met her eyes. They were dark, full with understanding and fear.

"A cruel therapy", she whispered.

"The only one I know."

Silence enveloped them for a moment, then she nodded curtly and got up.

"I will use your advice. Thank you."

So she wouldn´t let him help her. He hadn´t really expected her to though, not so soon. Her face confirmed his suspicion that she would rather suffer for hours than let him see her weakness just now.

He searched her eyes again and found them, wary and pleading at the same time, filled with a question which he couldn´t understand.

Could he let her go like this? Wasn´t it his duty now to stop her, to help her even against her will? He opened his mouth to tell her so, to order her to stay, but her eyes´ pleading made him falter.

And he understood. This was a test! He remembered her words now, spoken on the first night of their unlikely partnership. _No mollycoddling. No pity. No therapeutic session, no nonsense. And if I ever see something like pity in your eyes, I will be gone and you´ll never see me again._

He sighed and once more rubbed his tired eyes. She was right. To accept her meant to let her handle this on her own if she wanted to. He wondered when he had become so weak and despised himself for it.

"Very well", he agreed finally, "Tackle this on your own. But I want you to stay here for the night. Every night after you´ve been to the revels."

He sensed her protest and pre-empted her.

"This is nothing but a safety measure, Hermione. I need to be in reach for the likely case that something goes wrong. Do you want your Gryffindor friends hear you cry out in pain?"

Now she met his eyes, and it took her a long time to nod an agreement.

"Good night, then", she whispered and retired to her room, leaving Severus musing over this strange, silent compromise they had achieved.

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A/N:

Sorry! Sorry! (ducks behind her desk to avoid Weasley´s firecrackers thrown at her)

But I´m back, finally, and the next chapter´s already nearly finished! I promise weekly updates for the next month! Really, I do…

Thanks again for all your reviews, keep them coming and tell me what you think about their "big plan" – good idea? Bad idea? Do you like the way their relationship develops?

And stay tuned for next week´s chapter, "To Give You Strength" – Hermione is hurt again, and ends the evening crying in his arms…

All the best to everyone out there,

Kayly


	21. To Give You Strength

  
To Give You Strength

The next week passed in a quiet that reminded him of long gone, more peaceful times. For five days, he didn´t leave his chambers and only accepted the visits of Albus and Minerva.

And Hermione´s, of course. She would spend hours with him, creating codes they could use in letters and in public situations, developing a wide range of gestures that held hidden meanings to them, and work on her plan in greater detail. She couldn´t know when the time would be right for it, and she had to have it ready for the Dark Lord whenever that time came.

And as she had promised, she had found a way of keeping Draco safe while allowing him to participate in their work again, a rather ingenious combination of the Imperio Curse with a triggered Obliviate that would activate on certain keywords and wipe Draco´s mind clean of everything that could possibly be a danger to him or them. It only needed some testing to be done, but Severus hoped that it could be useful for Order members in general, though it would officially have to come from him. No student could be believed to have developed a charm that complicated, and Hermione wasn´t interested in getting any attention.

Hermione still wouldn´t open up completely to him, but her mistrust and nervousness slowly faded to a point when she almost seemed to feel comfortable in his presence. Not comfortable enough to trust in him or let him touch her in any way, but she would now read in his company or do her private research work, and sometimes he would look up and find her completely lost in a heavy volume or her own, meticulously organized notes.

As they worked together in quiet efficiency, Severus wondered when the resting period would end and war turn on them once more. And as if some mischievous god had listened to his thoughts, he didn´t have to wait very long.

It happened during a rather late staff meeting on Friday evening.

They were discussing quarrels between Slytherin and the other houses that had gone beyond the usual bickering and swearing and were slowly turning into a full scale war inside the school, when suddenly Severus felt something burning into his left arm and thigh. For one, terrible moment he believed that the Dark Mark had returned and that Voldemort was using their old connection to torture him now.

Then, he reached into his pocket and felt a coin, hot to the touch, then suddenly cold. Hot, then cold.

„I have to go", he said, his voice sounding unnaturally loud in the subdued atmosphere of the staff room, „I´m sorry, but I remembered an urgent obligation."

Flitwick, whom he had interrupted in mid-sentence, gazed at him in astonishment, a feeling mirrored by most of the present teachers. Only Remus´ face showed no surprise, as if he believed Severus capable of any impolite action anyway. He felt Minerva´s and Albus´ worried eyes on him and nodded slightly, a tiny wink of the head that nevertheless answered their question and deepened their worries.

His chair scraped back with a loud, screeching sound, but he didn´t care.

Only outside the staffroom did he withdraw the coin from its hiding place. It was the trick galleon he had charmed nearly a month ago, the counterpart of which he had given to Hermione.

Hermione! This had to be her. Some sort of emergency must have occurred, and she was calling for help.

With long, hasty steps, the hem of his robes billowing behind him like the upturned wings of a raven, Severus left the castle in direction of the Forbidden forest. He had no idea where to find her, just a vague hope that she had managed the apparation and was on her way back to Hogwarts. The coin had no location spell, and if she wasn´t here…

He only saw her when he had already nearly passed her. She was leaning against a tree, only her head and shoulders visible under the cloak he had given to her.

She beckoned to him, and he crossed the distance between them in a near run.

"What happened?", he asked, worry clouding his voice, "Are you hurt or…"

"Not badly", she interrupted him, letting the invisibility cloak slip to the ground. He could see now that her right leg was twisted in a wrong way, broken and bruised, "But that wasn´t the reason I called to you. The Death Eaters… damn, we haven´t got time for this", her eyebrows were drawn together in concentration and pain, "Do you have a handkerchief?"

"Here", he removed one from his breast pocket and offered it to her.

"Don´t give it to me. Transfigure it into a bowl… a metal bowl."

He didn´t understand a word she was saying, but he had promised to trust her, and this seemed to be the moment of testing. Wordlessly, he transfigured his white linen handkerchief in a bowl, small enough to fit into the folded together palms of his hands.

"Big enough?", he asked, and she nodded impatiently.

Drawing her wand, she aimed it at her temple and muttered an incantation. When she withdrew it, a drop of some silvery substance hung from its tip.

"Voldemort is planning the attack on three auror families", she explained hastily while placing the materialized thought into the bowl, "The exact location of their houses and their names are in here. You must hurry! I was… kept from returning immediately. I hope it´s not too late."

He nodded.

"Do you need help to return to the castle?", he asked, his mind already working on the rescue mission.

"No. If I take my own time, I will manage. I´ll wait for you in your chambers. If I´m not there, I´m somewhere on my way there. Now hurry up!"

"Take care", he ordered and rushed back to the castle, even faster than before.

It took some minutes to drive the teachers from the staff room, but Severus could be very convincing if he had to. Once only Albus and Minerva were left, he informed them of Hermione´s words and watched the ghostly figure of the Dark Lord giving the coordinates of the fated aurors´ homes to his Death Eaters.

It took less time to assemble a rescue team, but when Albus asked him to accompany it, Severus declined.

"I have other obligations", he explained, and Minerva´s warm smile accompanied him out of the staff room.

He found Hermione in the secret tunnel. She had cut a straight branch from a tree and was leaning heavily on it. Her movements were slow and of fading strength, but she only let him help her after he had informed her of the measures Albus had taken.

Then, she placed one arm around his neck and discarded the branch. He had to bow his head so that she could reach him, and it had to remain bowed during their tiresome walk or rather limp back to his chambers. But he knew she would refuse if he offered to carry her, and would fall back on her stick.

„May I help you?", he asked hesitatingly when they had reached his rooms, „You shouldn´t try the staircase with your leg. I could leave the library of course, but I´m much more adept at leg injuries than you are, and you don´t look particularly energetic."

„Nice way of putting it", she grumbled, but her eyes searched his face nervously. She didn´t like being touched by him, and there was still mistrust in her.

"I need your help anyway", she admitted after a moment of silence, "The leg I could have healed myself, but they have tested a new spell on it. It prevents the use of healing magic on the bone. Try it and the break gets worse. As does the pain. I have no idea what to do against it, and honestly, I´m not in the shape to concentrate."

She accepted his help, but only because she had to. Was that a good or a bad sign, he wondered for a moment before he brushed that thought aside.

"Let´s get you over to a chair first", he proposed and she nodded an assent. A hiss escaped her tightly clenched jaw when he settled her down on the sofa and lifted her legs onto it.

Next, he started a series of diagnosis spells.

"This might take some time", he explained, "I´ll make tea meanwhile. You sit tight and relax."

"As if I had a choice", she commented dryly, but her voice had lost some of the pressed quality that told him she was in pain and under emotional stress.

He left the kitchen door open and set the water to boil.

"Good move to think of the coin", he called over to her, "Why did you still have it?"

He heard her shift nervously on the sofa, her clothes rustling when they came into contact with the pillows he had placed behind her back so that she could sit upright.

"I tied it into my shoe lace. The house elves brought it to my chambers after the withdrawal, probably thought it was mine. I kept it, and tonight I suddenly thought of it again", she called back, "It´s one of those things girls do, you know? Decorating their shoes with all sorts of useless stuff. There´s another coin in the lace of my left shoe, but that´s just a normal one. They didn´t even notice it. Men."

He laughed silently at the dry humour in her last words and prepared the tea.

When he returned to the library, her cheeks had lost some of their unnatural paleness and the diagnosis spells were finished.

"That looks rather nasty", he said after studying the results for a moment. She nodded silently, obviously understanding the colour codes of the spells as well as he did.

"They cursed the whole bone of the lower leg", he explained nevertheless, if only because talking aloud helped him to think, "We can´t cure it this way, and developing a counter curse would take some time."

"Could we remove it?", she asked, and his head snapped up to meet her eyes, dark with pain and fatigue.

"That could work", he answered slowly, "Remove the whole bone and then use skele-grow to let it grow back. It would mean a night of pain though."

She looked at him, clearly not knowing if he was trying to make a very bad joke or if his concern was genuine.

"I should survive it", she finally said, "Don´t you think so?"

He grinned, "I´m nearly sure of it. But you should sleep here, down in the library. Just in case there are problems."

He saw her hesitation in the way her hands stroked the cloth of the sofa, and her brows drew slightly together. Then she nodded, just a short, sharp movement of her head, but suddenly he knew that this whole evening was a good sign, not a bad one. They were progressing, slowly but steadily.

"Sandwiches?", he asked.

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He had vanished the bones before they ate their late dinner. It was a strange feeling to see her leg go all wobbly, but the pain vanished together with the bone. Skele-grow she would take later, when "she had relaxed sufficiently", as her self appointed nurse in black robes had pointed out.

Not that she could relax while the Order was still out there, trying to prevent the massacre of three auror families. All of them had wives, and children.

„While we are waiting, you might care to enlighten me on something", he finally said, partly from the wish to divert her from her dark thoughts.

„What do you mean?", she asked cautiously. As it had so often been the case over the last weeks, sudden distrust turned her face cool and distant. She didn´t like it when he asked her about personal matters, and once, when he had only hinted at his ongoing interest in her reasons for spying, she had turned on her heels and left the room.

„Where did you learn Occlumency?", he asked, not betraying the deep, burning interest that lay behind this question, „Who taught you?"

He had expected her to refuse an answer, at the very least give him one of her Ice Queen stares, but to his utter surprise, she just smiled.

„Actually, it was you", she answered, but continued quickly when she noticed his startlement, „or rather a memory of you."

For a moment, Severus just stared at her. Then, he understood and a wry grin spread on his face.

„The Potter brat´s Occlumency sessions", he whispered and saw her nod, „Where did you find a pensieve?"

„I made one", she answered simply. Creating pensieves was difficult, they both knew that, but somehow Severus wasn´t surprised about this new prove of Hermione´s abilities. He knew her too well by now to be surprised by anything.

„So you convinced him of sharing his memories with you", he murmured. Did this mean that she knew...

She nodded again, „Except the memories he himself saw in your pensieve. He was too ashamed of himself to share them with anyone. I told him that I was interested in lessons myself, but didn´t dare ask you. He wasn´t surprised, and when I witnessed your... charming style of teaching, I was glad I hadn´t asked."

„Not that you would have asked anyway. You didn´t want any of the teachers to know." She smiled her agreement to that assessment.

„But surely those few lessons weren´t enough to master Occlumency", he said, not satisfied with her explanation, „Your grasp of the matter is beyond anything I taught Potter."

She grinned, „Well thank you, Severus! A compliment! And this time you aren´t even angry with me!"

He grunted at that, but was too curious to let it go, „Who taught you?"

„After I had practised with your memories and a book I found in the library, I started to slip out of Hogwarts every night. I disguised myself and found some guy in Diagon Alley who taught me a bit more. After that, I used Dumbledore."

„Used Dumbledore?", he echoed.

She blushed slightly, seemingly embarrassed of this part of the story.

„Everyone of us knows that Dumbledore uses Legilimence all the time: it´s what gave him that aura of knowing everything, after all. So I started behaving a bit strangely in his presence and then looked him right in the eyes. His reactions usually showed me whether I had managed to get false images across. And after that..."

Severus reached for his tea and took a deep gulp to mask his slight dizziness. If Albus knew that he had served as training dummy for a student! He felt like laughing, and wondered if he would ever find the courage to tell his Headmaster about this. Probably not.

„After that?"

„I used a boggart", she said without expression, „I remembered Harry´s episode with the dementors in third year. It wasn´t that difficult to convince myself that Voldemort breaking into my mind was my worst fear. So I found myself a boggart, hid him and used him to train. It took me three months to reach this level."

_Three hellish months, probably_, he thought, examining her expressionless face.

Though boggart activity didn´t have the same devastating effects as their real counterparts, they appeared to the victim as painful and terrifying as the original experience. He imagined being confronted by Voldemort again and again for three painful months and shuddered.

And again, the question nearly slipped from his tongue: _Why? Why do all this, Hermione?_ But he stopped himself. She wouldn´t talk about this, her forbidding stare told him so clearly enough.

"Inventive", he drawled, and suppressed the bubble of unasked questions firmly.

"Not really", she disagreed, "Harry trained his Patronus this way, back in third year with Professor Lupin. I got the idea from them. Now, is there any more tea?"

She sat up on the sofa and groaned as the tight muscles of her back protested painfully.

Severus walked over until he stood behind her, his clean, male smell embracing her like a cloud of calm. "You are terribly tense", he told her when tried to massage her shoulders with one hand, "Here, let me…"

Softly, he placed his long, slender hands on her shoulders and started to massage the pain away. The moment Hermione felt his touch on her skin, the warmth of his hands, she went rigid. It was as if all humanity had fled her body and left a cold, unresponding stone instead.

Severus felt her muscles stiffen under his hands and stepped back immediately, removing all contact between them.

_Too fast, _he thought, angry with himself, _You can´t expect her to trust so easily. Last time you touched her, you did so to rape her mind_. But still, though he never would have admitted it to anybody, he felt a sting of pain, and a sudden cold, as if some tiny flame of light had gone out.

"I´m sorry, Hermione. I was thoughtless", he said, trying to hide his disappointment, "I should have known…"

"No, no Severus", she answered hastily, her eyes growing wide when she sensed his dismay, "This has nothing to do with you!"

"You don´t have to explain anything", he said, no emotion surfacing in his words, "Though I can assure you that my massaging skills are excellent."

"That´s not the point", Hermione protested quietly.

_No, of course it isn´t_, he thought, _ it´s that you don´t trust me._

As if she had heard his words, her eyes darkened with guilt. She hesitated, but then reached out and touched his hand that was resting on the back of the sofa.

"It´s just so long ago since another human being touched me without… wanting something else", she tried to explain, insecurity written clearly in her face, "I´m not used to it. I´m all tight and screwed up and on constant alarm modus inside. Half of the time this body doesn´t feel as if it belonged to me anymore!"

She took a deep, shuddering breath and squeezed his hand once, tightly, before letting go, "At the moment, every touch is poison to me."

And in a flash, he remembered. How the touch of warm flesh had made him shudder and withdraw for years. How he had willed his body to become cold, lifeless and without need, wrapped in layers and layers of black cloth, to protect it and hide from view. He had turned his flesh into a weapon, something made of steel and lightning, unbreakable and untouchable.

Touch was not for him, the consolation of another human body was for weaker, purer beings, beings that had not tasted pain and mortification beyond measure.

And he remembered the longing for all that was human, the desperate need that clawed at him in the middle of the night, waking him in horror and haunting him through the dark, deserted corridors of Hogwarts.

"A weakness you can´t allow yourself", he whispered, still half buried in his memories while for a moment they seemed to become one in their pain, the girl and the man, "For you believe you don´t deserve it."

She stared at him, and in her eyes he found the mirror of his own feelings. Bright they were, brimming with pain and the desire for human touch, and fear.

He had to lower his eyes first, unable to bear this intensity any longer.

"Ill make us some more tea", he managed to croak, and fled the room.

´

Standing at the kitchen fire, the kettle already in his hand, he realized that his heart beat wildly and his breath came fast, in ragged thrusts.

Damn. How could this have happened?

How could this chit of a girl, a student half his age, touch him so deeply when he had believed himself untouchable for years? He was a grown man, for goodness sake, a master spy! He needed no one, not Albus, not Minerva. He had survived on his own for years, never seeking counsel or support from anybody! She was nothing to him!

_Why then do you feel so close to her? Why do you see yourself in her eyes?_

Muttering swear words under his breath, Severus Snape prepared the tea.

The long known ritual helped to calm him and it didn´t take him long to steady his breath and hands. No muscle in his face betrayed his inner turmoil when he returned to the library.

Hermione was watching the inky blackness of the night outside when he re-entered the room, carrying a steaming pot of tea. He filled her mug again and handed it over. Both took care that their fingers didn´t touch.

"I think it is time for the skele-grow", he finally said into the silence, if only to keep it from growing too large.

She nodded, still not speaking a word.

He fetched the bottled and poured her a glass of the awful smelling liquid. She downed it without batting an eyelid, but the muscles of her legs twitched visibly.

"Thank you", she said, taking another sip of tea to drive away the foul taste of the potion, "Have you never considered improving this vile taste?"

"Never thought it necessary. Even at this hellhouse of a school, skele-grow isn´t used that often. But if you plan on making it a regular source of food, I will of course set to sweeten it immediately. Should it be peppermint or peach?"

He was glad to see the ghost of a grin on her face.

"Strawberry", she answered, "I love strawberries", and suddenly, the room seemed warm and cosy again.

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A/N: Yes…I know…I promised she would end in his arms, but it just wouldn´t develop that way… But don´t worry, we´ll have enough embraces waiting along the way!


	22. Fighting

Disclaimer: Not mine except Jane, but she´s unwilling to do my housework, so what´s the use?

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Fighting

When the owl finally came, she had been dozing away on the sofa, numb with pain and exhaustion. But the rap of the bird´s claws on the window ripped the thin fabric of dreams away and she sat up abruptly, moaning when pain shot through her body like an electric shock.

Severus had already risen to open the window, but when he heard the muffled sound of pain, he turned around towards her and gave her a sharp glance.

"I´m alright", she whispered, but her feverish eyes and pale skin told him otherwise, "Let it in. I must know what happened."

He saw the tension in her small frame, the fear of what she would soon find out and the need to be sure. He wanted to tell her that – whatever had happened to those families – it wasn´t her fault. That she had done what was possible, and that tormenting herself wasn´t a solution. But then he remembered that commonplaces like these – normally uttered by a worried Albus – had never helped him one bit, and he remained silent.

The letter, which was tied to the owl´s foot, consisted of only two short sentences:

_They are back. I´m in my office._

He handed the small piece of parchment to Hermione and walked over to the fireplace. The moment the flames had turned green, the ghostly head of Albus Dumbledore appeared in the fire, immediately searching the room for Hermione.

"There you are, my dear", he greeted her, but without the usual joviality in his voice, "I trust you are well?"

"Quite well, thank you, Headmaster", she answered calmly, "What does the rescue team report?"

Severus knew her well enough by now to recognize the tension in her slim frame, the panic that seethed under her surface, but to Albus, her face showed nothing but serene calm. The old man had always relied too much on his Legilimence skills, and she was probably even now busily projecting images of calm onto the forefront of her mind.

_Lie to her, please! She doesn´t need the truth right now_, Severus found himself thinking fervently, but apparently, the Headmaster´s legendary sensitivity didn´t extend to girl spies.

"Two families they were able to warn and evacuate before the attacks. Unfortunately, they came too late to rescue the Hollins family. When they reached their house, the Dark Mark was already hovering over it. They had been tortured and then burnt alive", he told her in a tired voice, "The children were already dead when they found them, the mother and father survived only about another hour. I´m so sorry that I can´t give you better tidings, my dear…"

"No…it´s alright, Headmaster", she answered faintly, "I´m sure you´ve all done your best."

He saw her paling, curling together within her mind into a tight, protective ball. But Albus couldn´t see her eyes, and he didn´t know what news like that felt like. She fooled him well enough. And somehow, he noticed with awe, she even managed a tiny smile.

_No! It´s not alright, Albus! _He thought, enraged, while he watched the Headmaster´s expression of imminent relief, _You´re lying to the Potter brat all the time – why can´t you once extend your overprotectiveness to those who really need it? _Only a tight grip on his own emotions prevented him from snarling in anger.

Instead, he took over the conversation with Albus, allowing her to retreat into herself. After wishing the Headmaster a good night and cutting of the fire connection, he turned around to find her huddled deeply into the pillows, the blanket drawn up to her chin.

"I think I´m going to sleep now", she said, her voice as cold as when they had first talked in the Headmaster´s office.

He tried to think of something that would crack her shell of ice, of something that would help, but her eyes told him that it wasn´t wished for right now, and so he simply bid her a good night, told her that he would leave his door open and that she just had to call for him, and retired upstairs.

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They met over breakfast the next morning. Hermione had lain awake until dawn, pain throbbing in her leg, and thought about the people that had died because she hadn´t been fast enough. The children.

She had seen enough ghastly displays during the revels to know what they had endured before their death. There seemed to be something in children – perhaps their innocence, perhaps their deep and unrestrained fear – that would invariably excite the Death Eaters. They were usually at their best, or, depending on the perspective, their worst with the small ones.

Before her inner eye there flashed the images of broken limbs, torn and mutilated bodies, wounds that gaped like wide open mouths and faces, twisted with terror and pain.

She had failed them…

And, no matter what she did, she would always fail to protect those in need of it. She just wasn´t quick minded enough, too slow and helpless against an organisation so brilliant and ruthless it still took her breath away, though she had been part of it for months.

They were so many, with new members joining weekly, and she was alone. Even Severus, brilliant though he was, could not help her there.

She remembered how she had moaned in false lust under Lucius´ body, how she had twisted under the curses and hexes from countless wands, while in her mind, she watched dark figures closing in around silent, sleeping houses, planning an attack she was helpless to warn them about.

Had Hermione been one to still cry after all she had seen and endured, she would have done so now, in the darkness of the library. But she couldn´t cry.

Instead, she stared into the night for hours, her dry eyes burning like fire that no wetness could ever douse.

Somewhere around dawn, she noticed the pain in her leg subsiding somewhat, and when she raised her hand, whispering a short spell, she saw in the light that spread off from her palm that her leg seemed alright now, still bruised and adorned with a rather impressive variety of colours, but definitely sporting a bone.

She sighed in relief, swung her legs down from the sofa and, ignoring the pain that shot through her with every step, ascended the stairs to her room. She needed a shower.

Severus, on the other hand, had slept reasonably well considering the fact that he had – for the first time in perhaps twenty years – left the door to his bedroom open, unwarded and without a silencing charm. He refused to think about the implications of this undisturbed sleep, but couldn´t suppress a wry grin when his stomach gave a low growl in expectation of his breakfast.

_Becoming weak indeed, Severus!_

The grin faded, however, when he found the sofa on which Hermione had slept unoccupied. Swift strides brought him back to the upper storey, where he put his ear against the thick wood of her door. He relaxed visibly when the murmuring sound of a shower reached him.

She hadn´t been able to take a shower the night before, and he understood that cleaning herself after the revels had become some kind of ritual to her, some method of washing away the filth and pain and cruelty. Showering meant more to her than getting clean, it meant…

_Quite the psychologist you´ve become. _

"Breakfast in half an hour", he shouted, and thought he heard an affirmative from her.

While preparing the meal, he pondered over her state of mind. How to handle her today? She would be depressed, blaming herself for all and everything. Willing to throw away all she had achieved for the "poor children´s" lives. Not understanding that her work was worth much more than the survival of that family.

He had learned not to give those countless bodies faces, not to dwell on their suffering, but to concentrate on the job that had to be done. Commiseration usually helped no one. It only left you depressed and ineffective.

He greatly preferred this line of thought to Albus´ permanent understanding or Remus depressed silence. Caring only brought trouble. But he knew that his students would probably argue the point.

As would Hermione. He watched her over breakfast, her tired, red eyes, her mouth that was pressed together into a thin line, her twitching jaw muscles. She said little and ate less. Punishing herself, quite obviously. And hadn´t she told him that she didn´t want to stop caring? But this was ridiculous!

For her sake, he tried the Albus approach, coaxing her into speaking, even offering her chocolate, for goodness sake! But she wouldn´t thaw to him. Well, he had never understood how salvation could lie in a cup of hot liquid, either.

He really tried, but when she just rose to leave after breakfast, his patience finally failed him. It was with a certain relief that he slipped back into the role of Snape, venomous Potions Master.

"Oh for heaven´s sake, stop wallowing in self pity! You´re nearly as bad as the Boy Who Whines today", he growled and her head whipped around, staring at him in disbelief.

_Well, at least I´ve go her attention now_, he smirked, gestured towards a chair and then continued in an only marginally softer voice, "There is nothing you could have done to stop them. There will always be death around you, pain and suffering. Remorse, self reproach and sorrow make you weak, they withdraw your energy. But if you canalize your emotions properly, they can become a driving force, something that gives you power, and strength, and determination."

She had sunk back onto her chair while he talked, her eyes never leaving his face. When he met her eyes now, he expected defiance, anger or hurt. He should have known better than to expect a normal reaction.

Instead, slow understanding and fascination dawned on her face, "So that´s why", she whispered, her haggard expression softened by interest.

"Pardon?"

What was she talking about now?

"That´s why you were always angry, wasn´t it?", she asked, satisfaction in her voice. He knew that tone from perfect answers to the most difficult questions in class, "You used your anger to keep you going, and that was why you seemed to be infuriated all the time! I always wondered why someone as controlled as you would snap at his students like that, but if you _wanted_ to get angry…"

_Just too clever for your own good, Hermione!_ Severus was well tempted to snap at her now for this insight, but could he blame her for applying his theories? He didn´t know whether he liked her "answer" to the difficult question of Severus Snape, but at least she once more had some life inside her.

"Anger can be a powerful tool. But it needn´t be anger", he reluctantly settled into the role of teacher, "Dumbledore believes love to be the most powerful emotion, in fact, barely a day goes by without him hammering this belief into his wonder boy. Only you yourself can know what your driving force is. But you must turn it into strength, not allow it to become a weakness. If you´re furious with yourself, you won´t change anything. If you´re furious with those who are really responsible for the deaths of those people, you can unhinge the world."

She nodded, slowly, as if trying to grasp a theoretical problem.

"So what you´re telling me is that I don´t have to stop caring", she said, trying to form coherent words from the thoughts that sent her mind ablaze, "I just have to turn that passive feeling into an active force."

"You could phrase it that way." He never had and was rather amazed by that twist, but he certainly wouldn´t tell her that.

Silence reigned while she slowly nodded again. He imagined her filing away that information, putting a part of her mind to work on it like he always did. But she wasn´t finished with him yet.

"Why is it anger with you?", she asked silently, knowing that she had just overstepped a boundary, but having to ask anyway.

He just raised a knowing eyebrow and she lowered her head, accepting his silence and apologizing mutely at the same time.

"I think it would be time to begin with the more… pre-emptive side of our agreement today", he finally said. He hoped this was the right thing to be done at the moment, but he had waited too long already for his liking.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean our lessons, Hermione."

"We are not talking about Occlumency here, are we?", she asked, mistrust turning her voice cold and cautious.

He sighed, impatient with her stubbornness.

"No we are not", he answered , "you are as adept in Occlumency as I am. I couldn´t teach you, even if I wanted to. Nor do you need training in the more conventional aspects of potions, charms and transfigurations. What you need to learn are the things you can find in no book, on no timetable."

"What do you mean? What do you want me to learn?"

_Right_, he thought_, here we are. _He just hoped she would understand the necessity of this.

"The art of manipulation", he answered, "How to control others without letting them know. How to make them dependent on you. How to obtain knowledge about them and how to use it. How to fight with everything you have."

"But I know about these things", she protested, and he smirked at her outraged tone. It was a sign of how far he had come with her that she allowed her mask of indifference to slip in his presence. Dumbledore would have met only cold amusement after such an argument, but with him, she sounded almost sullen.

"After all, I did get Lucius Malfoy to do what I wanted, didn´t I?"

"We are talking about subtlety here, Hermione", he said dryly, and then, suddenly, "Did you know that Avery´s mother is a mudblood?"

"No. I didn´t… Does the Dark Lord…?"

"Know about it? Of course not. Avery has hidden her away as soon as the Death Eaters came into being. She has been in hiding for decades now. I am one of the few people who know where."

"How did you find out?"

"Other than you, I was accepted into their circle as an equal. This made me prone to information you´d never get on your own. They trusted me. I was their friend. There is not much you can keep from a friend, especially not from such a good listener as your humble servant. I collected their dirty little secret piece for piece and built a mountain from them. There is not much I don´t know. Or at least there wasn´t."

"So you want to teach me what you know about the Death Eaters?"

"Among other things", he confirmed, "But that´s not the most important thing you have to learn. My greatest task is to help you become what you already are."

She just rolled her eyes, "Oh please", she groaned, "Don´t give me that Yoda talk!"

Thanks to Minerva´s endless summaries of muggle films he could place that comment and grinned at her. But only for a moment.

"You have incredible skills, Hermione", he said quietly, "And you **are** a spy. But still you´re trying to remain normal in some twisted way, trying to blend into the students of this school. You can´t. You´re a blazing torch where they are flickering candles at best. You must accept that. And you must stop searching for companionship or understanding among them."

He ceased talking to let his words sink in. Brown eyes were fixed on his face in a wordless stare. This was cruel to her. He knew how much she had tried from the beginning. Ever since her first school year, she had tried to fit in, to make friends, be normal in any possible way. But even in the beginning, it hadn´t worked properly. He had watched her fail time and again, watched her how she had taken refuge in the role of the harmless bookworm.

"You are not one of them, Hermione", he continued, telling her what he had told himself years ago, an endless litany to make the pain go away, "And outside these rooms, there is no one whom you can trust. The whole world is an enemy, and you can´t afford to give anyone a leverage on you."

_That´s enough, _his inner voice told him, _or you´ll get her depressed again. Now, give her some action!_

He suddenly examined her critically, letting his eyes travel over her body in a judging manner that made her feel uncomfortable.

"That should do", he said and rose swiftly, "Come with me, Hermione."

She followed his gaze down her body in confusion, but saw nothing other than the clothes she had chosen for this day, wide cotton trousers and a dark read sweatshirt. _What the hell is he up to now?_, she wondered, but knew that he wouldn´t answer in this mood.

So she just followed him, out of his chambers and the classroom, glad to have some time for herself. He really was a master of manipulation. The dark cloud of depression had vanished, to be replaced by a turmoil of emotions she couldn´t name or place.

Black robes billowing, Severus led her through the dungeons to an old door she had often wondered about during her roaming the school. It had always been locked and resisted her every spell. When Severus now placed his hands on the knob, his eyes fixing a small hole in the wood, she knew why.

Excitement filled her. The last door he had opened that way had led to a wonderland of books and safety. What would he show her this time?

To her slight disappointment however, the opened door revealed nothing but a rather anticlimactic winding staircase. _Great, exactly what I need_, she grumbled under her breath, _Steps!_

Severus turned around, as if he had heard her, and grinned.

"I found this place shortly after I got the position as Potions Professor", he explained in a silky voice that didn´t show the strain of climbing while they ascended seemingly hundred of steps, "It must have been used by some club years ago, but once I refitted it, it suited my needs just perfectly. Especially the staircase. It´s the perfect preparation."

They had reached the end of the staircase and stood, once more, in front of a heavy wooden door. He smirked again, "Remove your shoes, please."

She knelt down obediently alongside with him, untying her shoelaces and placing her boots beside his black, polished ones.

Then, he opened the door and gracefully waved her through.

Staring in wonderment, she entered a large room so different from the usual Hogwarts´ interieurs that she had to check the view to assure herself she was still inside the castle. But she was, and from the position of the lake and the mountains, somewhere in the East towers.

"This is a gym", she breathed in surprise, taking in the mirrors along the walls, the floor padded with tatami mats and the closed cabinets that framed the mirrors, "What are we going to do? Duel?"

"That´s why it always was a pleasure to teach you, Hermione", he said sarcastically, "you tend to arrive at the right conclusions on your own."

Again, she blushed, but he could see her head rattling on.

"But you said we wouldn´t work on charms and transfigurations", she protested.

"And we won´t", he agreed, "What´s in the textbooks won´t help you much in a tight spot. You don´t need the official duelling code, you need the dirty tricks."

Meeting her eyes, he let all tension flow from his body and smirked at her.

"For example, you would be completely helpless if an attacker did…this"

And with that, he swung his fist towards her face in full speed, prepared to stop it directly before her widened eyes.

What he wasn´t prepared for was a perfectly executed block that used the force of his punch to turn him left, leaving his right side exposed and turned towards her. This and the small fist that suddenly rested at his throat, exactly on his Adam´s apple.

"Physical fighting?", she asked, as if their conversation had never been interrupted, as if she hadn´t very nearly shattered her Professor´s windpipe, "But I thought you´d teach me some hexes and curses!"

She lowered her arms and stepped away from him. For a moment he just stood there, rubbing his throat and staring at her absently.

"You never cease to amaze me", he finally said, "Where the hell did you learn that?"

She grinned.

"My aunt. She was a martial arts expert. Used to teach me when I was smaller and on summer holidays. Not very much, but I developed certain… reflexes."

He snorted. "Very much so. That should simplify things."

"You´d propably gone mad, teaching me the basics at this age", she agreed readily, "But why bother at all?"

"Because surprise always is the best weapon of a spy", he answered, "Real´ wizards are nearly always fixated on their magic as a weapon. A good kick or hit at the right moment may turn the tide on any fight. And you can revert to those techniques when your magic is exhausted, you don´t want to reveal it or can´t use it. I couldn´t count how often it saved my life over the years."

For one moment, she imagined Severus Snape, his black robes whirling around him, in a martial arts duel like those she had seen in movies, and couldn´t suppress a grin. But the image wasn´t powerful enough to divert her from the track.

"You´re probably right about this", she agreed thoughtfully, "I hit… Draco once, in third year, and he seemed absolutely devastated. Shocked, really. Not the way he would have looked after a curse or hex, but as if he couldn´t understand why I would use physical force. He ran away after that", she concluded, grinning with the memory.

"He never told me about that", Severus said, lips twitching as he imagined Draco´s panicked expression, "Now then, show me how much you´ve learned from that aunt!"

She knew only a limited amount of blocks, hits and kicks, but those she commanded fairly well. And her reflexes – as she had shown before – were excellent. All in all, the training this infamous aunt of hers had subjected her to provided a comfortable basis for everything he would teach her.

Only her stamina was less than satisfying. Be it from the strain of last nights injuries or from the lack of regular exercise, half an hour into their training he found her pulse beating like drums in the rhythm of her kicks and hits.

Ten minutes of sparring later, she was clearly exhausted, her punches weakening, but still no sound escaped her throat apart from an occasional groan.

When his eyes stole away from the muscles of her shoulders and stomach, which usually indicated an opponent´s next move, he saw tears streaming down her face.

Under normal conditions, he would have stopped long before, giving her time to catch her breath and calm her body, but this wasn´t normal training. Her collapse was exactly what he hoped for. She had to get it out of her system, damn her!

Fighting was a chance to let everything that was under tight control, clenched up inside and suffocating, out, to let the emotions run free. But though her body was slick with sweat and every cell screamed exhaustion at him, she kept her control, her face showing nothing but Anspannunng and exhaustion.

He increased the tempo. _Come on, Hermione, let it go_, he thought while aiming a low kick towards her hip that she blocked with more force than necessary, _Unchain yourself_.

"What´s the use of it all?", she suddenly cried out and placed a punch that would have paralysed his left arm, had he not diverted it to his right, "Why am I destroying myself with going there when I can´t even save the lives of those children? What the fuck is wrong with me?"

He could have answered to that, telling her that no, nothing was wrong with her, that she couldn´t hope to save everybody, that she had managed to rescue the other two families, after all.

But he kept silent. She knew all these things herself, after all. Knew them theoretically, but that wouldn´t keep guilt, shame and anger from surfacing and ruining her life. She had to get it out.

So he coaxed her on, testing her strength with rough blows and kicks, forcing her to losen the tight control around herself.

Her punches and kicks became more erratic and lost their gracefully rhythm. She lashed out whildly, not caring now whether they found their goal, and he could have hit her easily. Instead, he let her go on, blocking her when it was necessary.

"Why are they all dying?", she finally screamed in woeful voice that tightened around his heart, clearly forgetting that he was here to listen, "They are all fading away and I can´t stop it! Those children´s eyes – they burn inside my dreams…God dammit!" 

A wail escaped her, and her punches were nothing more now than blind guesswork.

Carefully, tenderly, he caught her wrists and held them, drawing her nearer to him. She sobbed hard now, finally allowing herself the weakness of mourning, and – after a moment´s hesitation – Severus folded his arms around her. She collapsed into his embrace. 

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A/N: Wasn´t really satisfied with this one... I hope you like it better than I did. Anyways, only two chapters till christmas. The pace of the story will quicken then, as dark events unfold on Christmas eve...

A word concerning HBP (careful: spoilers – don´t read if you haven´t finished yet):

As you all have probably noticed already, I will ignore Dumbledore´s death and Severus´ killing him in the further development of this story, I won´t use the horcruxes thing, either. But I still feel the need to tell you all that I **don´t **believe in Severus´ treachery. I think it´s a plot, or ploy, or plan or whatever, designed by Dumbledore! Right! Just to get that out! Feel free to comment on that opinion – I´d love to hear your thoughts on the HBP!

Next chapter in a week, if I get enough reviews, earlier!


	23. Friends and Allies

Friends and Allies 

„Double Snape this afternoon! I don´t think I can bear that. Too bad I finished off all my skiving snackboxes", Ron groaned and stared miserably at his lunch.

„I wonder what we did to deserve Snape", Harry agreed gloomily.

_Probably rescued a bunch of children from a fire_, Hermione mused, but aloud she simply grunted her agreement and kept her concentration on the plate in front of her.

Since Severus and she had started regular physical training, her appetite, which she had believed to be lost forever after her first month of revels, had returned with a vengeance. If she continued that way, building muscles and body strength, she would have to transfigure all her school robes to a larger size.

She had been so embarrassed after her break down, she hadn´t dared to meet Severus´ eyes for the next two evenings. But he had just ignored her behaviour, seemingly having forgotten all that had occurred on that day. Instead, he had driven her through exercise after exercise, until her body was covered in sweat and hurting all over.

They had been training every evening since last Saturday night, for hours on end, and while Hermione was silently cursing her sadistic mentor, he would bombard her with questions concerning the strength and weaknesses of every Death Eater she knew.

"Dolohov", he would call out to her while she was sprinting up the stairs, up and down, up and down and telling herself to breathe, damn it.

"Big man. Too big", she would pant, "Isn´t very fast or mobile. And insecure around women. Doesn´t like to hurt them."

"Bellatrix."

"Reckless. Because she´s mad, but also because it seems to be a Black trait. Loves giving pain, and doesn´t mind taking it all that much. Really, Severus, why do I have do run up and down like this? It´s ludicrous…"

"Malfoy?"

She had stopped running then, lifting her head and staring into Severus´ eyes. They held nothing, no pity and no anger, and that gave her the strength to answer.

"His lust", she whispered, her voice cold and detached, "And me."

"Hermione? Hermione, are you dreaming?"

Her head snapped up to that and she realized that she had been sitting motionlessly at the Gryffindor table for at least five minutes, remembering the events of the last evening.

"I´m all right", she answered Ron´s worried glance hastily, "Just a memory."

Harry shot a look at her and she saw the worry in his eyes. Ever since their long talk by the fireside he had been protective of her, watching her, probably for traces of sorrow and stress. It was sweet of him, really, but having him noticing her every move only made her job harder.

Then, suddenly, she could feel another pair of eyes on her, burning holes in her back with their intensity. Taking her time with it, she slightly turned around until the Head table came into view. There he was, looking at her with eyes everybody else would call cold and expressionless, but she knew him well enough by now to see the concern radiating from them.

Severus Snape, to most people as emotionless as a stone, wasn´t cold in the least. He was just unbelievingly subtle about what he felt. She knew that he had been watching her ever since this strange partnership had begun, looking for signs of distress but never mentioning it. And even thought she didn´t like being scrutinized like that, she wanted him to know that she was all right.

So she scowled at him. Smiling was out of the question, of course, but he knew she would take the hint and had to suppress a wide grin when, only heartbeats after their eyes had met, a twin scowl appeared on his face, before he turned back to McGonagall and once more ignored the Gryffindor table completely.

"Do you know that you´re looking just like Snape now?", Ron asked and she smirked at him, causing Harry to snort with laughter.

"Don´t be scary, Hermione", Ron whined and she reached out to mock punch him, when a dull ache in her arm reminded her that she had done this all too much over the last days. She had to suppress a groan and used the movement to hurl herself up instead.

"Come on", she admonished them, "Being late won´t make Potions any easier to survive."

"So Hermione", Harry asked as they slowly descended towards the dungeons, "Know already where you´ll spend Christmas this year? Will you come with us to the Burrows?"

_Gods, Christmas! Happy little children around the tree, too much food and useless presents! _

"I haven´t really thought about it… I´ll probably visit my parents", she answered and listened to their excited babbling during their walk to the dungeons, while images of horror flashed through her mind.

Molly Weasley constantly touching and embracing her when she had only barely managed to be touched by Snape. Sharing her room with Ginny, never having a moment´s privacy. Being forced to participate in the boy´s games, all the while terrified that her sleeve would roll up and reveal the Dark Mark…

But the idea of staying at her parent´s old house gave her the creeps, too. The place was completely empty, her parents having taken everything with them into their hiding, and it was impossible to safely ward the house. And remaining in Hogwarts was out of the question, too – Ron and Harry would never understand why she preferred the lonely castle to the happy hubbub of their home.

All in all, she was quite relieved when Snape stormed into the room and ended the topic in his own, unique way, namely by hushing them all with a glance of his black eyes.

While no one except Neville was terrified by him any longer, the respect for their dark Potions Master was deeply imprinted into them by the years, and his lessons were never interrupted by the usual whispering and lazing around that accompanied Charms or the History of Magic.

"You will spend this lesson and the next with the development of a simple detecting potion", he told them now, his wand pointing to the black board where instructions slowly appeared, "This potion will help you to determine the ingredients of any given potion. It is quite easy to brew, but exceedingly difficult in the use. Does anybody have an idea why?"

Hermione´s hand rose in reflex, but Snape ignored her, scanning the room as if no one had reacted to his question. It was an old game of theirs, never complete without a perfect answer from her and some form of insult from him. Sure enough, he finally seemed to notice her hand and nodded in false exasperation.

"Miss Granger then, if nobody else in this class possesses more brain than a flubberworm. But please spare us a lengthy quotation from the textbook Miss Granger, we all know that you spend your evenings with it."

Students snickered, and not only those from Slytherin. Even Parvati and Lavender sent her a sly look. She could sense Ron´s and Harry´s anger beside her and had to suppress a grin. Crossing words with Severus was more fun than with anybody else.

"Certainly, Professor", she answered, giving him her sweetest smile while he scowled back at her, and then plunged into an explanation as lengthy as she could manage.

_You called for it, now you get it_, her eyes seemed to tell him, and he had to turn away to suppress a wry grin.

Tired out from Hermione´s monologue about the dangers and benefits of detecting potions, the class turned towards brewing without further ado. Only Harry kept shooting angry glances at someone she couldn´t quite make out.

"What´s the matter", she finally whispered over to him, "You had better concentrate on that potion – it´s very advanced!"

"It´s that Justin Finch-Fletchley", Harry whispered back, "He keeps watching me – it gives me the creeps! I can´t concentrate like that."

Knowing exactly how Harry reacted to attention, Hermione followed his direction and sighed in exasperation. There was Justin, gazing at them from the corner of his eyes, trying to appear inconspicuous and making a very bad job of it.

"Do you know why?"

Harry just shook his head, "Take your pick", he commented bitterly, "Though I´ve received less death threats over the last months than I´m used to."

Ron had been right, Hermione thought as she watched her friend return to his brewing, Harry was indeed frustrated, and very much afraid. Noticing his tense shoulder muscles, she wondered when he would finally snap and do something really stupid. She fervently hoped not too soon.

Hermione spent the rest of the lesson with brewing and observing Justin, though she wouldn´t be noticed doing it by anyone. Only Severus shot her a questioning glance, just another reminder of how close this man was watching her.

What the hell was Justin doing there? Was he making notes?

A year ago, she would probably have shaken her head and ignored it, but her world had changed since then, and what she had once considered not more than a nuisance, she must ponder now as a possible threat. But… Justin? He had never seemed especially perceptive or intelligent, and the idea of this Hufflepuff binding himself to Voldemort just made her laugh.

He wouldn´t last a minute with the Dark Lord.

She was still thinking about Justin´s strange behaviour when they left the Potions classroom and headed back to their Common room. She had hoped for a chance to talk to Draco today, but Ron and Harry were sticking close to her now that they were "best friends" again. She would have to send him an owl as soon as possible…

„Now look", a cold voice drawled behind them, „The Nightmare Team´s back together."

They whirled around and saw Draco Malfoy standing in the corridor, alone as usual these days, but with a hoard of Slytherins in the back that smirked and urged him forwards.

„And I had thought that you´d take the chance to finally lose that mudblood, Potter. But your taste seems as bad as ever."

„Sod off, Malfoy", Ron replied wearily. They were too used to Malfoy´s ranting to even care by now, and after fifth year he had seemed to lose his venom. Not even Harry reacted to his taunts any longer. That was why the Gryffindor boys were very surprised when Hermione, normally the voice of reason whenever Draco was concerned, suddenly went red with anger and stormed towards him, wand drawn.

She had him backing up against the wall in less than a second, her wand at his throat and his eyes widened in a nearly comical display of shock and fear.

„I´ll show you what a mudblood can do, Malfoy", she hissed, and then, when her body obscured the view of Slytherins and Gryffindors both, her face relaxed into a smile, „Develop a spell to keep us safe, for example. Friday night in Snape´s quarters, Draco. Eight o´clock."

„Finally", he grinned, „I was becoming homesick already", and then, yelling once more, „Get off me you dirty mudblood! Don´t you dare lay a hand on me or I will..."

„Will what?", she sneered, „My wand´s at your throat, Malfoy. I don´t think you´re in the position to..."

„What´s going on here?"

The silky voice produced a most peculiar effect in the students around Hermione and Draco. They stiffened, their faces twisted in various expressions from guilty to horrified, and not a few were trying to drift inconspicuously away. Snape had arrived.

This hadn´t been planned, but it was better than the presence of any other teacher. Hermione shared a short smile with Draco, then turned around to the black clothed, irate Potions Master in full bastard mode.

„Miss Granger", he hissed, and some of the Gryffindors unconsciously ducked under the icy venom of his voice, „Kindly release Mr Malfoy. Immediately!"

She obeyed, slowing her actions just to the point that they seemed reluctant, and Draco backed away from her immediately, as if in fear.

„It was Malfoy´s fault, Professor", Ron said nervously, „He provoked her!"

In the back of her mind, Hermione rolled her eyes in exasperation. _As if that had ever stopped Severus giving us detention! _

Increasing the distance between Malfoy and herself, she passed Severus and shot him a short, expressionless glance.

_Detention for Friday evening **would** be useful this time, though. _

She saw the his eyes widen for a second in surprise, for a reason she couldn´t make out, then he whirled around to Draco.

„Detention for the both of you", he barked, „Friday evening in my office. Now everybody be off – this isn´t a circus. You come with me, Granger."

Harry and Ron looked at her with horrified sympathy, and she flashed them a weak grin, as if she was playing a brave front. She wondered why Severus wanted her to accompany him, though. After all, they´d be meeting tonight, weren´t they?

Was it a coincidence that he had picked Friday for detention?

"Actually, that fits quite well, Severus", Hermione said as soon as they had reached his office and closed the door behind them, "I told Draco we would apply the Obliviate charm on Friday, so we can just…"

„Do that again", he demanded, an excitement in his voice she had never noticed with him before.

„What?", she asked rather helplessly.

„Look into my eyes and concentrate on one thought. I want to know... perhaps I can read it again."

„What do you mean, again?"

Ignoring her question, he impatiently nodded her to go on with it and she sighed, knowing by now that there was no arguing with him when he was in a mood like this.

_Are you trying to say you can read my mind, _she thought instead, looking at him and projecting the question with all her strength to the forefront of her mind, where she normally kept a small amount of harmless, domestic images to satisfy the prying eyes of any Legilimens around her.

This time, his surprise was less perceptible than before. It didn´t keep her from jumping, however, when suddenly his eyes ceased to be the bottomless black pits she had come to know. Golden, flaming letters seemed to appear in the small space between his pupils and his mental shields.

_It seems so, Hermione, and quite easily._

„This is impossible", she whispered, still searching his eyes and their burning message. „i have never heard of this done!"

„Neither have I", for once, Severus´ voice had lost its silky control and was hoarse with excitement, "But Occluments tend to be very private people. Perhaps it´s just that no one ever tried to send a message."

"I wonder…", Hermione started, but then stopped using her mouth. Instead, she sent her thought towards him, not projecting it into her own mind but into his, and found that she could do this quite easily, as well.

_This is perfect! It will help us to communicate freely no matter who´s around!_

_It is very convenient_, he thought back, and she could feel his satisfaction, enveloping her like the purr of a large cat. The feeling washed over her, and suddenly she noticed how close she was to him. She could smell his scent and see the texture of his clothes and hair, that wasn´t greasy at all these days. His mouth was…

_Perhaps we should try it from a distance,_ she proposed, hoping that her mental shields worked even during this way of communication, for she couldn´t keep her mind from producing rather inappropriate sentences.

_What the fuck is wrong with you, Granger?_, she snarled at herself before she turned back to the task at hand. But still the strange intimacy of his thoughts in her mind, not violent at all this time, sent a shudder down her spine and she had to muster all her self control not to turn around and flee from the classroom.

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They spent the evening in the Common Room, Ron and Harry sympathising with Hermione, who had invented a rather gruesome story about Snape´s wrath.

"I can´t believe he´s still favouring the ferret", Ron said angrily.

"He´d favour anyone over Hermione", Harry muttered darkly.

"But you must admit that I _did_ attack him this time", Hermione couldn´t help saying, "And what a glorious feeling it was!"

She grinned, and the conversation soon turned into the happy recounting of reminiscences about how they had paid back to Draco over the years.

Hermione´s thoughts, however, had returned to her Christmas. Strange dreams kept her awake, and it didn´t help a bit that Christmas decorations were starting to pop up wherever she went.

By the time they reached the Potions classroom for their second double session, she was grumpy and had been forced to suppress several rather biting comments on Ron´s and Harry´s behalf.

Snape stormed into the room and simply pointed at the board before he settled down at his desk. Their eyes met and she sneered at him.

_Good morning_, she thought, and he sent her a smile. It was one of the strangest feelings she had ever experienced, like a warm, golden sun rising inside her mind, and she had to divert her eyes from his to hide her feelings. She had to do something against the strange side effects of their mind speech, and soon!

But the new ability enabled them to hold a conversation while the class worked on.

⁄ _wondered what you are planning to do about Christmas_, he thought at her and checked Neville´s cauldron with his trademark sneer.

_You say that word as if it were a virus_.

_Isn´t it?_

She sent him a snort, and saw him bending low over Malfoy´s potion to hide a chuckle.

The conversation paused for a minute as he berated the Slytherins for sluggish work, then he again met her eyes.

_Christmas, Hermione?_

She sighed in exasperation. _God, why is everybody suddenly asking me that?_, she sent him and he returned a huge, silvery question mark.

Instead of an answer, she transmitted the memory of Harry´s and Ron´s invitation to the Burrows, along with a small package of her worries about that. She silently hoped he would have an idea to avoid any of those unpleasant choices.

He was silent for a long time, not meeting her gaze while she pretended to concentrate on the all too easy potion.

Finally, he looked at her again, and she drowned in his black eyes. _We could use the time for practicing, you know._

Hermione felt as if her heart had missed a beat. For once all pretence forgotten, she stared at him openly.

Do you mean… 

He scowled, but there was a hint of nervousness in his thoughts, _You probably wouldn´t like it. I´m not good at that cosy sentimental stuff…_

She grinned at the black, intimidating figure that loomed over his students like some dark creature from the night, and sent him a thought warm like a hug.

Yes, Severus. I would love to spend Christmas with you! 

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A/N: Many thanks and cookies for all your wonderful reviews! I checked stats yesterday and nearly suffered a heart attack when I saw how many people are actually reading this! You certainly make one humble author very happy!

Now about the HBP issue – spoilers! - :

Most of us agree that it was all set up and our dear Severus is, in fact innocent. I´m very glad about that, for how can so many intelligent people be wrong?

But there´s another question which popped up when I wrote this chapter – Do you want Ginny in this? Hermione and her are kind of friends and she´s quite cool, but I completely forgot about her till now! So tell me if you want that to change or if she should step into the story – I will bow to your vow!

Now, I will conclude this rather lengthy author babbling with a hint to next chapter, which will contain Draco´s enchantment and his rather astonishing insights into the developing relationship between Hermione and their Potions Master! Have a wonderful week,

Kayly


	24. Deck the Hall

Deck the Hall

Five minutes to eight, Draco knocked on the Potions Professor´s office door and was let in only moments later.

Snape greeted him with a sharp nod and, like the day he had visited Hermione, led him thtough the dark and austere quarters to the magic tapestry.

This time, he had the chance to observe his environment, and what he saw made him grin. Many rumours circulated among the Slytherins concerning their Head of House. Some contained specific information about his vampiric nature, some even claimed he ate students for dinner.

Nobody had been surprised when his Death Eater background had been revealed, only the spy part had startled them.

These fake quarters fitted his grim persona perfectly. But still, the beautiful and lush chambers they now stepped into hadn´t taken Draco completely by surprise, either.

Despite their respect or even awe, most Slytherins knew that there was a side to their scornful Professor no other house had ever encountered. He didn´t coddle them, but whenever a Slytherin had reached the depth of despair where no student could help, he would seek out Professor Snape, sometimes from his own will, sometimes coaxed by the others.

They never talked about what occurred in his dark office, but somehow, a solution for whatever problem they had would be found, and no student remained without consolation.

"Hermione has been called, and I don´t know when she will return", Snape now told him and gestured for Draco to take a seat somewhere in the library.

"She´s at the revels, Sir?", Draco asked, slowly lowering himself onto a sofa.

"Indeed", Snape simply answered, ignoring the worry in his voice, "But we won´t idle around while we wait for her. What did she tell you about the spell we are going to perform?"

"Not much", Draco shrugged, "We didn´t have time for longer conversations. Only that it will keep me and herself safe from discovery should I be questioned."

"That about sums it up, but perhaps an explanation in greater detail would be helpful nevertheless", Draco started. Had his Head of House grinned?

"Do you care for tea, Draco?"

Draco did not, honestly, he rather preferred coffee, but that probably wasn´t the best way to start this conversation. After all, he had to survive this meeting until Hermione returned. So he nodded his thanks and accepted the cup.

Sipping the hot liquid, he did his best not to wrinkle his nose in the famous Malfoy facial play of disgust – it tasted awful. Somehow, Snape didn´t seem deceived and smirked darkly the way he did when handing out detentions. So the man really did have a humour? If indeed, it was a twisted one.

Walking over to a desk overflowing with parchments, scrolls and books, Snape carefully retrieved a sheet and handed it over to Draco.

Scanning the page that was filled with Hermione´s precise handwriting, Draco´s eyes widened at the sheer complexity of the spell they would attempt.

Snape answered his questioning look with another sharp nod, similar to his earlier greeting.

"It won´t be easy", he said, "But Hermione and I have tested every step. Be assured that no harm will come to your mind."

"That´s not the point", Draco hastily explained, "I was just… surprised by how complicated this is. I´ve never seen a spell combining so many different elements before."

Snape nodded. "Neither have I."

His confusion was probably clearly written on his face, for Snape gave another of his irritating smirks and went on.

"Though this will likely never be known to anybody except you, me and her, this spell was invented by Hermione. She has researched, planned and experimented in great detail to develop this possibility to keep you safe, and I expect it to be used on most members of the Order the moment I introduce it to Dumbledore."

"Hermione did this?", Draco asked with awe in his voice, "I mean, I knew she was intelligent, but this… Why do you want to keep it secret that she invented it?"

"Look at your reaction", Snape simply answered, "And you know quite well what she is capable of. Do you want the Order to suddenly start wondering what made her design such a spell? Or why she knows enough about the Dark Arts to manage it?"

"Dark Arts?"

Suddenly, Draco was nervous.

Snape sighed again, pinching the bridge of his nose with his index fingers. "Let´s talk it through, shall we?", he proposed, and Draco nodded in acceptance.

Detailed information about the spell did nothing to cease Draco´s nervousness. His first impression had been right – it was incredibly complex.

First, they would start off with some strange ritual Hermione had found in an ancient textbook

"It used to be a Healing Spell", Snape explained, "Basically, you agree to give a certain number of people free access to your mind, enabling them to alter certain elements of your brain."

"To alter… my brain?", Draco asked, trying in vain to keep the panic from his voice.

"Yes", Snape confirmed, and sent him a long, probing look, "The ritual was invented for the earliest psychological treatments in wizarding history. We will use it to select certain areas of your brain and connect them to the triggered Obliviate. We could do this without your invitation, of course, but it would be painful for both parties and much more dangerous."

Right. Draco took a deep, shuddering breath. So they would alter his brain. He had known it all along, in a way, but to have it explained by his brooding Professor did nothing to loosen the tight knot of anxiety in his stomach.

"The next step consists of two potions you have to take", Snape went on, tracing the formulae on the parchment with his fingers, "I brewed and tested them myself. They are based on a muggle medicinal technique. Basically, the first follows all traces of "dangerous knowledge" in your mind, that is your connection with Hermione, your knowledge about the Order and me, your dealings with Dumbledore and your real feelings concerning your family and the Dark Lord. The potion finds this knowledge and marks it, or rather its position in your mind. The second potion will do the same for all elements of your "earlier character", or what Hermione referred to as your "bastard-self" during our research."

He smirked, as if recalling a private joke. Draco found it hard to imagine this dark man joking and bickering with his Hermione, or even working together with her. But right at the moment, he honestly didn´t care. His priorities were more with the marking and alteration of his brain, and he had to resist the impulse of cradling his poor head in his hands.

"Then", Snape continued, "we will start with the work."

Draco gulped. The man honestly looked as if he was enjoying all this.

"The… work?", he asked unsteadily.

"We will trace all dangerous knowledge and bind it to our Obliviate charm. If it is triggered, neither you nor anybody else, not even the Dark Lord, will be able to access these regions of your mind. They will simply stop all activity, and thus seemingly cease to exist. Then, we will use the second potion to build a persona for you, a set of characteristics, beliefs and opinions that is as orthodox as the Dark Lord could wish for. We will also bind this persona to the Obliviate, so that whenever it is triggered, this persona will step in and take over your actions. Understood so far?"

"I think so", Draco nodded, "So in general, you are replacing my personality with a mask that even the Dark Lord won´t see through. At the same time, I will forget everything that could endanger me, you, Hermione and the Order, right? But how will it be triggered, and how…", this was the tricky part, the thing he really worried about, "How will I get my memories back when the danger´s over?"

"That´s the brilliant part of it", Snape said contentedly, and Draco had the sudden association of a huge cat, purring in satisfaction while watching its prey, "Hermione devised a completely new use for the Obliviate. Normally, it is applied directly whenever it is needed. That wouldn´t be much use to us, of course. Instead, she found a way to link the spell with key words, special circumstances and stress level."

He paused, but Draco just looked at him, asking for a further explanation.

"This means, Draco, that a Slytherin can accuse you of being a "mudblood friend" in the middle of the Great Hall, or that Professor McGonagall can demand of you to tell her "everything", and nothing will happen. You can be extremely nervous or afraid, and nothing will happen. You can walk the corridors of Malfoy Manor, or even the Dark Lord´s Headquarters, and nothing will happen. But if you find yourself in a very stressful situation, in the presence of Death Eaters or Lord Voldemort, and you are accused of being a Mudblood friend, or asked to tell them everything you know, the Obliviate will trigger immediately, leaving you with the perfect persona to deal with the situation. And the persona will remain until one of the persons you entrusted with this power will reverse the Obliviate. Understood?"

Slowly, his mouth dry and his mind a chaos of awe and confusion, Draco nodded. He hadn´t known that such a thing could be done. And Snape´s voice, his whole body language told him that Snape hadn´t believed in such a possibility either, at least not before Hermione had shown it to him.

That she had taken so much effort to keep him safe, so much effort to allow contact again…

"Who will these "entrusted persons" be?", he finally asked, not willing to voice his thoughts and feelings in front of Snape.

"Hermione, logically", Snape answered, "And I would also recommend the Headmaster. There is a certain incantation, along with a bonding ritual, that will turn this power over to whatever person you choose. Decide on at least two persons. If everyone entrusted with the reversal keys should die, you wouldn´t be able to revoke your old personality."

"Would… would you be one of those persons, Sir?", Draco asked hesitantly.

"Certainly, and with pleasure, Draco", Snape answered, an unreadable expression on his face. Then, his eyes darted over to the large clock. Fifteen minutes to nine already, and Hermione hadn´t returned.

Draco felt the old nervousness return to him, the suffocating worry that had assaulted him whenever she had been called and he had known about it.

"Don´t you worry about her, Sir?", he asked quietly, searching Snape´s dark eyes for reassurance.

"Certainly not", Snape answered briskly, cool, emotionless silk in his voice, but there was a glimmer in his eyes that belied him, "Hermione is quite capable of handling this on her own. She´s a spy, after all."

"You thought differently when you first found out. You thought she didn´t have a chance and wouldn´t survive for very long", Draco voiced his fears.

Snape´s gaze pierced him, ripping his masks away until his naked worry lay open before him. Only Hermione had ever looked at him this way, and only she had never judged him. It seemed that his dark Potions Master and his only friend had more in common than he had ever thought.

"Suffice it to say", Snape finally broke the silence, "That I have… learned one or two things about Hermione in the meantime. She will be safe, Draco. Trust me."

And to his surprise, Draco found that he did.

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It was half past nine when Hermione finally arrived. Snape had offered Draco sandwiches, or rather forced them on him, telling him that he would need "every ounce of strength".

„Sorry I´m late", she said, shedding her cloak and sending it towards her room with a flick of her wand, „But I met Hagrid on my way back to the castle and had to pretend I had searched for him."

She looked at them apologetically, but Draco sensed that there was more going on than just her being late.

He had been right. Snape walked over to her, his posture stiff and angry.

"Still trying to be nice even when you´re hurting all over? You´re incorrigible, Hermione", he scolded, "How often have I told you…"

"Not to care so much about other people, I know, Severus", Hermione finished the sentence for him, "But I´m not that bad, really."

Draco tried to make out what Snape could possibly mean. Hermione looked great to him, her face reddened by the cold wind outside and her eyes bright and happy. Obviously, nothing bad had happened to her during the revels at all.

But Snape just looked at her expectantly, as if waiting for her to do something.

„Drop it", he finally ordered when it became apparent that she wouldn´t comply, and to Draco´s surprise, Hermione´s face and body suddenly rippled and she moved her shoulders as if to shrug off a second skin.

Draco couldn´t help himself. A gasp escaped his lips as he stared at the Hermione that stood before him now. Her eyes tired and red rimmed, her lower lip swelling around a nasty cut, she looked like she had gone through a severe beating. Down her left cheek there ran a gash that even now bled heavily, clotting her hair and the left side of her face in red.

„Glamour charm", she told Draco, seemingly not noticing the wounds that disfigured her face, „Sometimes I forget to take them off."

"You went to Hagrid with this?", he asked disbelievingly.

She made a small hand gesture, as if to wipe his shock away, "It looks worse than it is, Draco. That´s just a scratch."

"Still it needs healing", Severus´ silky voice cut in. Silently, he extended his index finger and arched it in an inviting gesture, and Hermione complied without a word, lifting her head so that he could reach her wounds more easily.

With swift but careful gestures of his wand and hands, Severus cleaned the wounds and closed them.

When they had finished, Draco expected them to step away from each other and turned towards the sofa, preparing to offer Hermione some tea, but they didn´t move.

Draco watched on in astonishment as their gazes locked and seemed to dive into each other. It was a strangely intimate moment. Hermione´s head was tilted upwards, her lips opened slightly, one hand placed on Snape´s arms. The older man looked down at her with dark, glowing eyes, his face expressionless but for a tiny muscle around his mouth that twitched irregularly, as if responding to some strange thought.

They looked rather like two lovers, frozen in a moment before the kiss, than a pair of spies, and Draco felt like an intruder. To his surprise, he didn´t find the idea revolting at all. _But Snape would never… she´s his student_, he thought.

His confusion only heightened when, without any preceding movement or sound, Severus suddenly nodded and ended the eye contact.

"Have some tea and take your shower", he told her and moved towards the fireplace, "I will report to the Headmaster."

"Thank you, Severus", she said, and the black clad figure vanished through the fire.

Hermione sighed in relief and finally turned back towards Draco, whose face must have shown his confusion, for she just smiled at him, sat down on the sofa and padded the space besides her.

She poured herself some tea, leaned back and turned her head towards him, her eyes tired but full of warmth.

"It feels good to have you here, finally", she said, "Did you get on with Severus?"

It felt strange to have her speak so casually about the man she had hated fervently not long ago, especially after that strange display of touches and looks he had just witnessed.

"Well enough", he answered, watching his hands, "And you seem to get along quite well, too."

She frowned at him, unsure about the hidden meanings in his words. Then, as he met her eyes, realization dawned on her. To his surprise, she just laughed, placing a hand on his shoulder.

"Oh, that", she chuckled, "I didn´t realize how this must look. It´s not what you think, Draco!"

"Don´t get me wrong", he hastily interrupted, "I don´t mind, Hermione, I really don´t."

"We´ve found a way to communicate via Legilimence", she went on explaining, ignoring his protest, "It´s much faster and more effective than even a pensieve. I have sent him the relevant information gathered tonight and he will hand them over to the Headmaster now."

"Oh. All right then", Draco answered, falling into silence. _But it´s not all right_, he thought. There had been more to his impression than just the long, frozen look they had traded. The way Snape had touched and behaved around her. Never had he seen his Potions Master so human, so unguarded.

And Hermione… She didn´t trust easily, and she didn´t like to be touched. He had learned that much about her by now. But the way she had leaned into his hands, the way she had offered her face to him…

"I´ll leave you alone for a moment, Draco", Hermione suddenly announced, "I need a shower and a change of clothes. Eat something. You need…"

"Every ounce of strength I have. I know, Hermione", Draco grinned, "Snape already drilled a load of sandwiches into me."

"Right then. I´ll be back soon."

True to her word, Hermione returned less than twenty minutes later. She had barely sat down when the strange tapestry in one corner of the room began to glow and Snape stepped through.

"It´s a one way fire connection", Hermione replied to Draco´s questioning glance, "So he had to come back the long way."

"The Headmaster sends his greetings", Snape informed them, then his eyes fixed on Hermione.

"Are you sure you want to do this tonight? You´re not too tired?", he asked.

"Yes, it´s alright. I will manage." Hermione smiled at him.

_He could ask me if I were ready_, Draco thought grudgingly, _After all, it´s my mind they are going to mess with._

As if she had heard him, Hermione now turned around to him.

"How do you feel, Draco?", she inquired softly, "Are you sure you want to go through with this? You don´t have to, you know?"

For a moment, he wanted to back out. He had always hated to be manipulated, to have his most private thoughts exposed. But then he thought of all the work they had gone through, for him, to keep him and Hermione safe, and determination filled him.

"Let´s get going", he told them.

The first part of the spell seemed strangely anticlimactic after all the nervous expectation. Hermione and Snape walked around him in circles, holding candles like some folkloristic Wiccan congregation, and chanted questions at him, which he had to answer with a ritual "So mote it be".

It was the potions that really freaked him out. He had barely gulped down the first one when a shrill, stinging pain assaulted his head. He yelled and fell to his knees, clutching his face in his hands.

Cool fingers returned him from the void where only he and the pain seemed to exist. Hermione was cowering in front of him, stroking his hair and murmuring soothing words.

"It will be over in a moment", she whispered, "And the second one isn´t as bad. Don´t fight it."

"How do you know that", he choked, the pain still searing through him like some savage reaper.

"Because I took it, stupid", she answered lovingly, "And I´m still here, am I not?"

"Give me the second one, then", he croaked, "Let´s get it over with."

He downed the second potion, not allowing himself to think of the pain that would double in a moment. But it didn´t. The pain barely increased, and after a minute, he felt he could breathe again.

"Gods", he complained, "You could have warned me, Hermione!"

She smiled at him, but he could see that her thoughts were a million miles away. Then, Snape took her by the elbow and led her away from the sofa, over to the window, where he left her standing silently, a golden shadow amidst the darkness of the night outside.

"She needs to prepare herself", Snape crossed back over to him, his voice lowered to a whisper, "This is going to be difficult."

"But… won´t you do it?", Draco stammered, "I mean… you´re older, and much more experienced, aren´t you?"

"Hermione has mastered the art of Legilimency as well as I have. Sometimes I wonder if she does´nt surpass me. In addition, she knows you much better than I do. Therefore, she will do the main work and I will assist her", Snape explained simply.

Draco just stared at him. This was Snape, for goodness sake! The man who felt superior to everyone. Who had kept his arrogance even in front of the Dark Lord! And he was treating Hermione as an equal, believing that she was better equipped for a difficult job than he was?

Somehow, he didn´t know whether to be glad or worried.

They stood in silence for a while, Draco marvelling over the strange revelations of the night, Snape lost in his own thoughts.

Then, Draco felt a hand under his chin, lifting his face, and his eyes met Hermione´s.

"Are you ready?", she whispered, and he nodded, not trusting his voice.

She looked changed, he noticed, older, stronger. Powerful. She was radiating power like a lighthouse spread flame in the darkness of the night. That was his last thought before she delved into his mind.

He could feel her inside him, probing, touching, her thoughts like warm hands that comforted and held him. So he let himself fall, gave in to those hands and felt his consciousness wane. At some point, he noted a strange, different presence in his mind, its touches cooler and of scientific precision. But it didn´t hurt him and he could still feel the comforting warmth that was Hermione.

Then, he didn´t how much time had passed, it was over.

His face was suddenly relieved and he staggered backwards. Strong hands caught him and lowered him into an armchair. He looked up and saw Snape standing before him, his dark eyes examining him critically. Behind him, Hermione had fallen to her knees, her face a mask of exhaustion.

"I´m all right", he wanted to say, but the words came out in a croak barely understandable.

Silently, Snape handed him a cup of now cold tea and he gulped it down, not caring about the bitter taste.

"Herrmione?", he whispered, and Snape answered without taking his eyes off him.

"She is well", he assured him, "How do you feel?"

"Okay. Just… a bit of a headache. Did it work?"

"We will have to see", Snape said cryptically and turned around to help Hermione up. She clung to him for a second as her legs collapsed under her, then she mustered the strength to stand on her own. Snape led her over to the sofa, and she sank down with a sigh of relief.

"Severus and I are now your memorykeepers, Draco", she finally said, flashing him a tired smile, "I think it went quite well, but to be sure, we have to test the spell. Do you want to do this another day? You must be tired."

_I may be tired_, Draco thought, examining her face, _But you look like death_.

"Today", he answered, "as long as you ´re up to it."

"She will just sit there and drink her tea", Snape cut in, "I will do the work. But first, we all need a break I think."

This said, he strode from the room, probably to prepare some more of this infamous brew he called tea.

His thoughts still swirling and his head aching like hell, Draco didn´t feel the need to talk. One look at Hermione told him that she shared his feelings, and so they sat in silence, heads tilted back against the head rests, eyes closed.

He awoke when a hot cup of tea was pressed into his hand. To his delight, the smell of coffee drifted up to him. He opened his eyes to a very un-Snape like grin, and found he could smile back very easily. This man had been inside his head, quite literally. There was no need to pretend around him.

"We set quite a number of key words that will be trigger if coinciding with a certain atmosphere or stress level", Hermione explained from her place on the sofa. Her voice was hoarse, and her articulation less precise than he was used to.

"There is only one thing that will activate the Obliviate immediately, and that is an attempt to enter your mind via Legilimency, veritaserum or the use of Imperius. To test if the spell worked, Severus will now attempt exactly that. Don´t struggle, it shouldn´t hurt."

Too tired to argue, Draco just turned his head around and found his eyes suddenly fixed on Snape´s. Their blackness seemed to envelop him, and he felt himself fall…

Hermione felt awful, her body was aching all over and all she wanted right now was the permission to fall asleep, but excitement kept her wide awake. They had worked so hard for this! What if she had made a mistake?

"It looks perfect", Severus´ voice whispered while his eyes remained fixed on Draco´s, "Good work, Hermione."

She took a deep, relieved breath.

"Let´s see how he reacts when you release him", she answered, and Snape nodded, breaking eye contact and backing away from Draco´s limp form.

A wise move, for the second the daze left his body, Draco sprang up, lunging at the exact spot were Snape had stood only a heartbeat before.

"Where am I?", he shouted, his whole body in a position of defence and anger, his face a mask of cold wrath.

"I don´t know how I got in here, but you will release me this instant", he hissed, his eyes like icy steel, "Release me or you will pay."

Suddenly, he reminded Hermione so much of his father that she had to suppress a shudder of fear.

Severus, obviously noticing her distress, moved over to the sofa and placed a comforting hand on her shoulder.

"Everything´s all right, Draco", he tried to soothe the aggressive boy, "You came here because you needed a special potion, don´t you remember?"

"I´d take nothing from a blood traitor like you, Snape", Draco spat, disgust twisting his face into an ugly mask, "And what is the mudblood bitch doing here?", his cold gaze rested on Hermione, who shrunk back further into the sofa.

"She found you lying unconscious in the middle of the entrance hall, for goodness sake", Severus suddenly thundered, snapping into full teacher mode, "Don´t you wonder why you can´t remember the last hours, idiot boy?"

Something in Draco´s posture changed from full combat mode to a lurking slyness. Hermione didn´t know which behaviour was worse.

"Good", he snapped back, "Give me the potion, then. But I warn you: If this should be a trick, my father will…"   
"I´m not mad enough to cross either the Dark Lord or your father any further", Snape cut in coldly, "Let me check your condition before I administer the potion." 

Striding over to the boy, he tilted his head upwards with a rough gesture and again delved into Draco´s eyes.

Strings of words pearled from his lips, unintelligible to anyone but Hermione, Draco and Severus himself. They had chosen a combination of sounds and words no one would ever stumble across by accident.

The moment he fell silent, Draco´s slim frame shivered and convulsed. His eyes were wide open, unseeing and glazed over, and only Snape´s supporting arms kept him standing.

Then, his face began to twitch, and slowly, his eyes opened again. Once more, his face was completely changed, and Hermione marvelled how much those two persons, inhabiting one body, differed.

Silently, Snape led Draco over to the armchair once more. Draco´s cheeks were crimson with a violent blush, and he didn´t dare look at them.

"Gods, I´m sorry, Professor, Hermione", he whispered finally, "I can´t believe I acted like that!"

"No need to apologize." Hermione smiled, though her insides were hurting with the cold she still felt, "You behaved exactly the way I hoped."

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A/N: Now look at that! Such a long chapter! Like it? Hate it? Tell me about it! Shall we try to get fifty reviews together for this chapter? Oh, come on, click the little button on the left!

Now that we have reintroduced Draco into the story for good, get ready for major fluff – Christmas is coming!

Oh, and by the way: I have started another story, called „Had I known". It´s a Snape – Harry story, no slash though, that ignores the HBP. Go and have a look!


	25. Bittersweet Mistletoe I

Bittersweet Mistletoe I

Snow fell around Hogwarts, and Christmas closed in on them mercilessly.

Hermione had to admit how much on edge she was. All the singing, decorating and jumping around in expectation went badly with her real frame of mind. One afternoon, she blasted a singing Christmas gnome to a thousand pieces before even noticing what she had done. It had sprung at her from behind an armour, and reflexes had taken over. Luckily, she had been alone at the time, but she felt rather badly for the poor thing.

All Ron and Harry would talk about were the Christmas holidays, how much fun they would have and how cosy and wonderful it would be, sitting around the Christmas tree with every single Weasley available.

Luckily, they attributed Hermione´s lack of enthusiasm to the problems with her parents and didn´t press her to join in.

The general noise in the Common Room had reached a level unbearable to her, and she spent even more time in Snape´s quarters or her own room, studying, reading or fighting.

That was why, on the second evening before the end of term, Severus found her in the gym, sweating all over and panting but more relaxed than she could remember for a long time.

"I hate Christmas", she told him without breaking the rhythm of her punches.

"Welcome to the club", he smirked.

"The students are bad enough", she continued, moving on to sit ups, "But the professors… Dumbledore is running around as if he expects eternal sunshine and ice cream for everyone!"

"And who´d want ice cream in this weather", Severus grinned, walking over to the window and watching the dark clouds that emptied snow on the castle.

She grunted in agreement and concentrated on her high kicks. When she had run through her full series of exercises, she felt a presence behind her and whirled around, just in time to block and trap his fist.

He lowered his hands, and as she grinned at him, dropped something into her hand.

"This, Hermione, is a knife", he said, quite unnecessarily.

"Now really", she retorted mockingly, "And I had thought it a rubber duck."

"Knives", he went on, simply ignoring her joke, "are, when handled expertly, among the most dangerous weapons there are. You can take them with you wherever you go, hide them in your hand or under your clothes, and they may give you just the advantage you´ll need in a tight spot."

"Plus they are nearly impossible to block even with a sword", Hermione added, "At least, that´s what my aunt told me."

"Clever aunt."

"So you want me to learn fighting with this?", she asked him, not sure whether she liked the idea.

"I would recommend it. Especially because it is what I´m best at", he flashed her a smile.

"Oh, don´t tell me there´s something you´re not perfect at", she teased him, "It would give me the shock of the year!"

"Brat", he shot back, then walked to the side of the room and removed his robes. Attired in nothing but shirt and black linen trousers, he returned and moved into attack position. She copied his every movement, not noticing that she was grinning with excitement.

Knives – more dangerous, but certainly more fun.

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The great Christmas trees were erected on the last morning of the term, unfortunately during breakfast. Hermione sighed and lowered her head to hide her annoyance. So much fuss, only to create dozens of convenient hiding places for attackers.

Her gaze darted over to Severus, who was sitting at the High Table with a huge scowl on his face. As if having felt her eyes on him, he met her gaze and sent a single word.

_Humbug!_

Hermione choked as pumpkin juice collided with her laughter somewhere down her throat. Ron and Harry had to slap her back and did so rather too vigorously to her liking. There had been another meeting the night before, and her back was still sore.

She sensed Severus´ concern and flashed him a short _I´m all right, don´t worry_.

He smirked at her_, Constant vigilance_, his thoughts thundered in her mind, such a good imitation of Mad-eye Moody´s barking that she started coughing and laughing again.

When she left the Great Hall, she noticed Draco and moved her head to the left in a short, barely noticeable gesture. But he understood. When she had excused herself from the Gryffindors and gone in search for her "lost book somewhere in the Great Hall", he was already waiting for her in their favourite storage room.

He embraced her so tightly she could barely breathe, but it didn´t matter. Of all the good things that had happened to her during the last weeks, this was perhaps the best. To have her Draco back, her only friend.

But he wasn´t her only friend any longer, and since they had applied the spell, he had even developed a way of interacting with Severus, albeit a rather tentative and nervous one, mainly based, as he had once told her, on the fact that "Snape was obviously good for her".

"Gods, I don´t want you to go there", she whispered now, terrified with the prospect of cold, unforgiving Malfoy Manor and the dangerous madman that lurked inside, "Be careful, will you?"

"Course I will", he answered her, but the intensity of the embrace only increased, "I´m his only heir, remember?" The bitterness in his voice made her heart bleed for him.

"Try to spend some time with your mother, and don´t risk anything! If something happened to you, Draco…"

"Nothing will happen", he reassured her, "Will you take care of yourself in turn?"

She smiled at him. "I promise. And if not, Severus will force me to."

She said goodbye to Ron and Harry after lunch, telling them that she would floo from McGonagall´s office.

"It´s quite difficult to get to the safe house", she explained, hugging both of them quickly, "A Ministry worker will accompany me. Now you two, take care of yourselves and don´t run any risks."

"Same goes for you, Mione", Ron replied, "And when it all becomes too much – the Burrows is always open for you."

"Thank you guys. Have a wonderful Christmas!"

She waved them out of the entrance door, then returned to her Head Girl´s room. Packing the belongings she thought she´d need over the holidays, she carried her trunk over to McGonagalls office. The Professor was out, but had left her door open as agreed the night before

Hermione didn´t know what her Head of House was thinking about her Christmas domicile, but her surprise at the long and deep friendship between McGonagall and Severus had taught her never to underestimate the woman again.

Inside the room, she shrunk her trunk and slipped on the invisibility cloak Severus had given to her. At exactly five past two, the office´s door opened and in walked Professor McGonagall.

"Ah, Miss Granger", she said in a clear, carrying voice, "I´m sorry you had to wait."

"It doesn´t matter, Professor", Hermione answered as clearly and slipped through under McGonagalls arm that held the office door wide open.

"Have a nice holiday, Hermione", the teacher whispered, waited another second, and closed the door behind her.

It was a strange feeling, stepping through the magic tapestry and knowing that this would be her home for the next two weeks. Strange, but nice in a heart warming sort of way.

_Going all teary again, Hermione_, she smirked. But then, why not. It _was_ Christmas, after all.

She unpacked her luggage, returned to the library and chose a book. Severus wouldn´t arrive till the evening, having to supervise the boarding of the Hogwarts Express and mingle among his colleagues afterwards.

Jane kept her company during dinner, and entertained her with childhood stories from Severus. Some were enormously funny, and Hermione found herself giggling like a teenager, something she had sworn solemnly never to do.

From the sound of it, Severus rooms at home had experienced as many explosions as the twins place at the Burrows. Perhaps even more. And she would certainly mention the number of his melted cauldrons when he´d complain about Neville the next time.

She did notice that Jane avoided all mentioning of Severus´ parents, but decided that the thought of the very people who had thrown Jane out of their house would probably ruin the evening.

In turn, she treated Jane with a detailed account of her determined work on behalf of the house elves, something she found sadly funny in retrospection. How naïve she had been! But Jane wouldn´t hear it.

"It was a good idea, darling", she said firmly, "And you had the right goals in mind. But it couldn´t work. The world is changed in here", she pointed her finger against her forehead. "As long as the house elves don´t realize their rights, nothing will ever change their treatment. Oh, if we´d only manage to unite, we´d be a force to reckon with", she twisted her row of pearls dreamily.

Finally, Jane disposed of their meal´s remains with a snap of her fingers and left her, heading off for some committee meeting or whatever she was spending her evening with.

Hermione resumed reading, but a strange, warm feeling rising in her stomach kept her from concentrating. Only when the magic tapestry glowed and the tall black figure of Severus stepped through, did she recognize the fluttering feeling in her belly.

She was actually looking forward to Christmas.

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The next days passed without any major catastrophes, injuries or crises. In a way, one could have called them peaceful.

Hermione and Severus settled into a steady rhythm easily enough. They – or at least Severus, who had turned out to be the night owl she had always assumed him to be – would sleep long, meet for breakfast, train a couple of hours, spent their afternoons on their own and meet again for dinner and evening training.

Often they would sit together in the library, he at his desk, she in her personal armchair, she reading, he grading essays or drafting articles. Muttered comments or criticisms – both were used to talk with the text in front of them if it angered or surprised them - would lead to lengthy discussions about the strangest topics. Sometimes, Severus would rush her up into his lab to prove his theory, or she would select a book from his library and read aloud to him, simply ignoring his thrown in, lengthy comments.

Oh yes, he had shown her his lab, and she had been overwhelmed by it. Sun streamed through it for most parts of the day, and the long rows of wooden shelves held every potion ingredient she had ever heard of, and some more. The room had breathed friendliness, discipline to her. It had smelled like home.

She would watch him prepare his potions, marvelling at the expertise of his long, slender fingers and the concentration that seemed to emanate from him whenever he worked. Sometimes, she would assist him, but she felt content enough just sitting their, following his every movement and memorising the lectures he delivered absently.

Her Dark Mark hadn´t burnt since the end of term. Sons and daughters had returned to their Death Eater parents´ home, and even the Dark Lord seemed to want an undisturbed holiday.

It was a wonderful time, surely the best since Hermione had decided to become a spy. She could have spent her life like this, researching, talking, sharing thoughts. She felt a twinge of bitterness at the realization that she had only found this by sacrificing the life she might have had. But it was a very small bitterness, and the golden days made her forget it easily.

And all too soon, Christmas had arrived.

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"I hate Christmas presents", Snape said coolly, "Everybody has realized that by now and doesn´t expect them from me."

"Obviously, it doesn´t keep them from sending you presents", Hermione, who had sent her presents away by owl that morning, commented, and watched the large pile of presents and the Christmas tree with a mixture of astonishment and exasperation.

It had been a compromise, Severus had explained, forged between him and Jane years ago. She would insist on a tree, a real, big one, and he would insist that it shouldn´t disturb him. So they had settled on a fir tree, decorated in dark red and black.

It was the strangest Christmas tree she had ever seen, but when she had descended from her room on Christmas eve, and her eyes had fallen on the two dark clad figures, one towering over the other, decorating it and bickering all the time, it had seemed quite appropriate.

"This tree is scary", she announced now, walking around it and eyeing the decoration warily.

"Yes, it is quite fitting", he agreed, and met her fit of laughter with a good natured grin.

Having given up on the matter of trees and decorations, Severus seemed nevertheless determined to ignore the significance of the day as much as possible, harassing her into training directly after breakfast.

She felt like collapsing when they returned to the living quarters, even though Severus had healed her bruises and the ankle she had overstretched. She still wasn´t a match for him, but she was getting better and better, and from the glint in his eyes she could see that he was starting to enjoy their sparring.

She opted for a long, hot bath and buried herself in bubbles, thinking how much a part of herself these rooms and inhabitants had become over so short a time.

She had expected to miss her family – over Christmas their house would be filled with cousins, grandparents, aunts and uncles, but this was even better. She wasn´t related to the two people downstairs, but they knew her better than her parents had for years.

While soaping and rinsing her body, she noticed the effects of their training. Muscles were building on her arms and legs, and her skin had developed a healthy, glowing tone. _If things go on like this_, she thought contentedly, _I will even be able to look at myself in the mirror again, soon._

Humming to herself, she dried her hair and her body. After a moment of insecurity in front of her huge, open wardrobe, she chose dress robes, not the revealing ones she´d wear to Lucius´ invitations, but a simply cut, unobtrusive set held in gold and light brown. She let her hair fall loosely over her back and pondered the question of make up, finally deciding that it would look exaggerated. Severus would probably await her in his normal robes, and smirk at her attire.

But he didn´t wear his normal robes. In fact, he had abandoned them for dress robes of a deep, burgundy red that suited him perfectly. He did smirk, however.

"Jane forced me", he greeted her, "What kind of excuse do you have?"

"Pure, sodding sentimentality", she replied unashamedly, and gave him her most roguish grin.

"Well, you are young and unversed in the ways of the world", he sighed resignedly, but suddenly, he arched his body into a deep bow.

"In that case", he said, straightening again and offering her his arm, "May I accompany you to your seat?"

"Where is Jane?", she asked, noticing the little elf´s absence.

"She fled to her niece after preparing dinner", he told her, "She knows I´d dampen her spirits."

He lowered his voice conspiratorially, "I heard her singing while she cooked. It was awful."

Christmas dinner was delightful. Jane had prepared enough for ten people, it seemed, and the Christmas pudding was delicious.

"Another compromise", Severus grumbled, pointing at his pudding as if it was a living, rather dangerous thing, "I traded the pudding for an absence of crackers."

"Wise choice, that", she remarked, and helped herself to a second piece.

Afterwards, her belly full and her limbs aching with a comfortable, lazy exhaustion, she settled herself on a sofa in front of the Christmas tree. She had expected Severus to return to his normal schedule, and had hoped fervently that he would forget about their evening training tonight. She felt too full to even move.

But to her surprise, he sat down beside her and examined the Christmas tree silently, with a frown on his face. For a tiny, surreal moment, she expected him to break into a song.

"There is a staff Christmas breakfast tomorrow morning for all of us who stay at Hogwarts", he said instead. "Albus coaxes me into attending every year, and it would be suspicious if I didn´t participate."

"Sure", she shrugged, "But you should expect crackers at such an event."

"I have resigned to them", he answered darkly and was rewarded with a chuckle from her.

"So, as I won´t be here tomorrow morning", he broke the companionable silence after awhile, "Why not open the presents tonight?"

"It´s against tradition", she protested, "But… oh, well, why not."

She turned to her stack of presents and carefully unpacked them one by one. Harry had bought her a selection of very fine, coloured parchment and a fragile quill made of glass. To her astonishment, Ron presented her with a rather nice necklace.

"I wonder what he´s thinking", she murmured, "normally, he´d buy me all kinds of awful things. Probably enlisted Ginny´s help this time."

There were also packages from other school friends and the rest of the Weasley family. Jane had given her a book on the "psychological background of slavery". Dumbledore and Dobby both presented her with a pair of woollen socks. She wondered if they had bought them together.

Draco´s present was an old, richly illuminated book called "Onward from the Middle Ages. A study of changes and traditions."

After she had finished unwrapping, she watched in amusement as Severus divided his stack of presents into one rather large and a very small one.

"Those are from colleagues and people I don´t like", he answered her unspoken question, gesturing over to the large pile.

He examined a small, round present critically, and placed it aside with a sigh.

"Albus will give sherbert lemons like every year", he sighed, "To sweeten my temper, as he so adeptly puts it."

Minerva´s present was a book. A shadowy figure was depicted on the cover, under which big, red letters read: The Tragic Hero: Dark, Brooding and Seductive. A critical Companion through the Ages.

"Oh, what wonderful friends I have", he muttered.

Hermione couldn´t keep a grin spreading on her face, but Severus just shook his head.

Next, he turned to a huge, bulky package and unwrapped it apprehensively. The wrappings revealed a stack of paper, several drawing utensils and a book with the title "Drawing. A Beginner´s Course."

"That´s from Jane", Severus told her, "She always gives me something I´m bad at. Says it´s good for my character."

"You seem to have a knack for receiving educational gifts", she commented, reaching behind her, "I´m afraid mine is blatantly out of line."

She handed him a present, wrapped in red paper, and for a moment, his hands rested on it without moving.

"Open yours first", he finally told her and selected a box that lay a bit apart from his presents.

"I thought you hate giving presents?", she protested.

"Don´t punish me for making an exception once, or it won´t happen again. Anyway, I would have given these to you Christmas or not. Now seemed as good a time as ever."

Her hands shook a little as she opened the box. She hadn´t expected a present from him.

The box´s content however took her breath away.

"Severus, they are wonderful!", she whispered, carefully lifting one of the two slender knifes from its wrapping to examine it further in a firelight. "What are they made of?"

"A special type of Perspex", he answered, "Sharp as any steel and untraceable by metal detectors. The sheaths are dragon leather and have glamour charms stitched into them. Integrated Portkeys will transport them to a place of your choice, be it your hands or these quarters."

Smiling in delight, she traced the dagger´s outline with her fingers and tested the blade. She could herself and her smile widened.

"It is perfectly balanced and light as a feather!"

"I hope so", he simply said, "You deserve only the best."

Had he been one of her house, or perhaps even Dumbledore, she would have hugged him fiercely for this. But something about the thought of embracing him made her feel awkward and nervous…

"Thank you so much", she whispered instead, and softly touched his hand. "Now open mine!"

His movements were slow when he unwrapped the box, and she found herself holding her breath in anticipation. She hadn´t been sure about getting a present for him, worrying that she overstepped the limits and he would react with scorn. Now she rather wondered if he wouldn´t be disappointed. These knives were so… beautiful! Her present could barely compete with them.

Carefully, he opened the box and withdrew a teapot. It was so black that it seemed to absorb the light around it, and only when he lifted into the light the hundreds of tiny onyxes could be seen sparkling and shining.

"It´s from India," She said nervously when he remained silent. "Protective spells keep the tea warm and fresh and enhance the its properties. I know it´s not much, but…"

"It is very beautiful, Hermione." He interrupted her, his voice glittering with amusement. "Stop apologizing for your gift, it doesn´t become you."

"Oh." She said, not knowing what to make of his response. "All right."

He raised his eyes towards hers and sent her a short message, the thought whispering through her mind like a soft summer´s breeze. _Thank you._

"I think I´m going to test it right now." He suddenly announced and took the teapot with him to the kitchen. The way he cradled it in his hands, like something precious, made her heart ache for him.

This was probably the first "real" Christmas gift he had received in years. And it had been from her.

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"But how exactly?", Hermione suddenly demanded crossly.

Severus raised his head from Minerva´s rather amusing book. They had spent the hours after gift unwrapping silently, leafing through the books that had been added to their collection, but he was used by now to her sudden exclamations.

"How exactly what", he asked.

Without missing a stride, Hermione turned from arguing with her book to a discussion with Severus.

"It says here that wizarding and muggle cultures interacted closely during the middle ages, "influencing each other on nearly every level"", she quoted the book Draco had given to her, "But it doesn´t say how exactly this influence looked like."

Pursing his lips, Severus thought a moment, then placed his book aside and strode over to one of the shelves.

"I have a book somewhere that should illustrate it", he murmured, "It´s something about the history of art… Ah, here it is."

He chose a heavy, illustrated book and walked over to Hermione. Sitting down beside her on the sofa, he opened the volume and leafed through the pages.

Hermione remained silent.

It was the first time they sat so close to each other, and Severus had expected that she would move away, restore her personal space. But nothing of the sort happened. Instead, she leaned over to the book, scanning the pictures closely with fascination in he eyes.

"I bought this years ago when I started to wonder about the tapestries and sculptures in Hogwarts", he explained, "I asked myself where the builders of Hogwarts took their ideas of architecture from, but if you start looking closer, it goes far beyond that. In many ways, the wizarding world formed its ideals about beauty during the middle ages and never moved on."

"That was my impression when I entered Hogwarts", she nodded excitedly, "Everything felt… so medieval, like the old cathedrals and castles. But how did this transfer of ideas work? Did wizards and muggles have more contact than today?"

"Actually, the old cathedrals are a good example", Severus answered and plunged into a lengthy explanation.

His fingers traced the pages of both his and her book, pointing out a relief, a tapestry or a masonry sign, and her eyes followed the soft movements of his fingers.

As he had come to expect it in their discussions, her questions nailed down every weakness of the general theories, prompting even longer explanations on his part.

He had reached the tale of Gawain and the Green Knight when a quiet yawn made him realize he had been going on for nearly half an hour.

"I´m sorry", he said, surprised that so much time had passed, "I´ve tired you. You should be in bed, or talk about something less boring."

"Not at all", she replied sleepily, an open smile on her face that stemmed from the state between waking and sleep she had entered, "It´s fascinating. And I love to listen to you. I always have", her voice trailed away, drowsiness clouding her words, "It´s your voice, you know? I love your voice… Like velvet and steel…"

He looked at her, bemused, not knowing what to make of this comment, but her hooded eyes were fixed on the pictures, and in her state of tiredness, he didn´t know if she even remembered what she had said. So he resumed his talk, his slender index finger gliding over the objects and symbols on the page, until he suddenly felt a soft weight on his left shoulder.   
He turned his eyes towards her, and found that she had fallen asleep finally, her head resting on his shoulder and her hand curled around his upper arm. 

Carefully, so as not to wake her, he gathered her up in his arms and carried her up the winding staircase and into her room.

He laid her down on her bed, marvelling at the trust and inner peace she must feel to let sleep overtake her in his presence. In a way, the weight of her head on his shoulder had been the best Christmas present he had received for a long time.

Slowly, he removed her shoes and placed a blanket over her relaxed body, than straightened up again.

For a moment he just stood there, watching Hermione how she lay in her bed, utter peace and calm displaying in her face. Her mouth was slightly open, and if he´d leaned closer, he could have made out a soft, barely audible snore.   
A smile bloomed on his face, so full of joy and warmth that it would have shocked everyone he knew. Then, Severus turned around and left the bedroom. 

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A/N: Sniff, there you are, some fluff and some fun, though I´m crap at writing either of them. Anyway, I hope you liked this warm and happy little chapter, for we´ll be going dark again!

Next chapter features a meeting between Hermione and Lucius and its rather gruesome effects, a desperate Potions Master and some very, very dark descriptions.

Unfortunately, it might take me some time to update again (unless you persuade me otherwise), for I´m quite busy at the moment.

And thank you all for your wonderful reviews! I´m doing my best to reply, but real life´s pure stress at the moment, so be patient with me! And keep those reviews coming – they make my day!

All the best,

Kayly.


	26. Bittersweet Mistletoe II

Disclaimer: No. Not mine. Nothing belongs to me. Though, if they did… stares madly into the distance and begins to drool - no, not mine. Sigh. 

A/N: Right, oh you my beloved readers! Before I give you one of the darkest chapters yet, I´d like to address a few questions that came up in the reviews several times and might be interesting for all of you (if they aren´t, just skip this part):

How long will this story be? Apart from „very long" I really do not know. We have reached about the middle, I believe. Not that I´m sure. This story seems to possess a will of ist own...

Will their be a romance? Yes, definitely. And it is coming closer. You´ll probably know what I mean when you read through this chapter.

Will the others find out? Yes, and soon. Harry, Ron and Remus Lupin are in for a big surprise not far ahead. And there will be an eye opener or two for the rest of the Order along the way, too.

Isn´t Hermione getting too soft? I don´t think so. But you might have noticed that Severus is going quite soft, too. That´s the way I want their relationship to develop – soft at the inside, hard as diamond at the outside. Soon they will unite and become the terror of the civilised world... ahem... yes.

Feel free to comment on every point of the above. You have no idea how much I cherish your input!

And now on to the story. Readers be warned: There´s violence ahead. And blood. And darkness. And pain. If ye cannot handle it, turn back to safer waters!

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Bittersweet Mistletoe II

When he returned from the staff meeting, grumbling about the waste of his time, she was gone. Slowly, he walked over to her armchair, where she used to place her notes for him.

A yellowish parchment was lying on the seat. It held nothing but one word in her precise handwriting.

„Lucius."

He bit out an oath. They had counted on the fact that even Death Eaters wanted their Christmas undisturbed. They had not considered the effects a harmonious Christmas with the family would have on Lucius, however.

Severus didn´t want to imagine what mood Lucius had been in to meet with Hermione. His arrogant, cool headed wife Narcissa, hating and ignoring him since he had lost them their place in society by being convicted as Death Eater. His son, though trying, lacking the peculiar enthusiasm a Death Eater needed as badly as he needed a good cloak-maker.

Fear coursed through him, panic at the sudden thought of losing her. What if Lucius cracked? What if…

_Get a grip on yourself!_

Gritting his teeth, he slowed down his breath and forced the panic out of his system. He refused to even think about the consequences of this attack. It wouldn´t do to forget his own central lesson, the lecture he had hammered into Hermione again and again over the course of the last weeks.

_Do not care about other people. Not enough to let them disturb your work. Do your job and think about nothing else. If there is nothing you can do, stop worrying. Consider the things you _can_ do instead._

He had never found it hard to believe in this mantra, to stick to it. Keeping everybody at bay, driving them away with his biting sarcasm and arrogance hadn´t been difficult.

He hadn´t understood why Hermione should refuse this lesson. Until now. It needed nothing more than the thought of her death to make him…

_Pathetic. Cease whining and get to work._

And thus he got to work, not able to suppress the memory of a very similar afternoon, nearly two months ago, when he had worried about Hermione and tried not to.

He would keep away from poetry, this time.

He set the wards of his chambers to notify him the moment she entered his office, and went up the two floors to his lab, where he started chopping, grounding and brewing as if the world depended on it.

Hours went by. He noticed the light outside waning and ignited the lamps, refusing to make a break or waver in his concentration, as if his work could somehow keep her from being harmed.

The entrance alarm raised him. He looked up and saw that darkness had fallen while he worked. Descending the winding staircase, he could see her shimmering figure making the transition through the tapestry.

She looked horrible, clothes dishevelled and hair in turmoil. It were her eyes that frightened him, though. Huge and dark like tunnels into the deep, he had only seen such an expression of mindless fear in them only once, during her first hallucination. They burned against the contrast of a skin so white that it was almost translucent.

"Damn it", he whispered. Then he crossed the distance between them and tried to lead her over to the sofa. She backed away from his touch.

"I couldn´t climb the stairs to Gryffindor tower", she explained, her voice not more than a hysterical stammering, "I tried but it hurt to much. So I came here. I only need a shower and my bed and the pain will stop. I´m sorry if I disturbed you, I won´t…"

"You were right to come here", he interrupted her, wondering why she felt the need to excuse herself that way, "What happened?"

"Nothing", she whispered, not meeting his eyes.

Gently, he touched her chin and, forcing her face upwards, met her eyes. A whimper escaped her throat, and in her gaze he saw the chaotic dance of madness.

She stumbled away, "Nothing. Nothing at all…", her voice dying away like the rustling of a dry leaf.

"Don´t lie to me, Hermione", he admonished her softly, "Are you injured? Are you bleeding somewhere?"

She nodded, her head bowed. His heart ached with the sight of her.

"Has Lucius hurt you?"

Another nod, so tiny it nearly escaped his notice.

He sighed, "I will carry you upstairs and we will take a look at you", he said, placing one arm around her shoulder and reaching for her legs.

"No!"

Her scream pierced his ears as she tried to evade his touch frantically, stumbled and fell to her knees.

"Don´t touch me! Don´t hurt me! Please, I´ll be good!"

Terror gripped him. She had left him again, was shut up in her own private hell with no entrance. What had the bloody bastard Lucius done to her for goodness sake?

He fell on his knees beside her, trying to meet her eyes, to calm her, but she wouldn´t look at him, her movements becoming more and more panicked. She would work herself into a fit that way, and all the time she was paling, her gestures slurring down to those of a drunkard. She was losing blood and they didn´t have time for a panic attack.

"Hermione Granger", he hissed, fury with what they had done to her turning his voice icy cold, "You will look at me this instance. Raise your head, god damn you! Look at me!"

Slowly, she lowered the hands she had clasped before her face. Slowly, her head rose from her lap where she had hidden herself from him.

"I am not Lucius Malfoy, Hermione!", her frightened, small face took his bite away, but he articulated his words carefully and precise. She needed to understand this.

"Look at me! Who am I?"

Her eyes searched his body for recognition. She raised a trembling hand towards his face, but before she could touch him it twitched away as if she had burned herself.

"S…Severus?"

"Right. I´m Severus Snape," He said, searching for her eyes and sending calmness through their connection. "I won´t hurt you, Hermione. I will tend to your wounds. You can let me touch you."

"No…no", she protested weakly, "You shouldn´t touch me. I´m dirty! Gods, I am so dirty I will never be clean again. You don´t know what he did to me, what I did…"

A shudder went through and her eyes closed as she fought against the memories.

"Stop it this instance, Hermione!" he ordered sternly, "You did your job. I would have done the same. And now I´m going to carry you upstairs while you tell me exactly where you are hurt."

"I can´t…"

"Hermione, do you trust me?"

He knew this question was risky. If she didn´t trust him completely yet, it would cause her to retreat further. But he was really worried now. He could see the front of her skirt darkening with blood and her erratic behaviour spoke of a bad shock she had received.

"Do you trust me?"

"Yes…yes."

Relief washed over him, "Then you will let me care for you, Hermione. I will take you up now. I won´t harm you."

Her whole body went rigid when he touched her, but she made no move to stop him, and he gathered her up in his arms.

"Tell me what happened, Hermione. I´m sorry, dear, I know this is hard, but I have to know what he did to you."

He didn´t hold with coddling normally, and the idea of calling anybody his "dear" would have outraged him a month ago. But he couldn't forget the braveness with which she had defied him an eternity ago in Albus' office, couldn't forget her pain when he had betrayed her. The shining gold of her eyes when she had lifted her knives to the firelight. The void that filled those eyes now.

He carried her up the winding staircase, feeling her mouth work against the white linen of his shirt, but only fragments reached his ears.

"…so ashamed…"

"No reason to be ashamed in front of me. I did much worse things. And I won´t tell anybody else. Please."

"He directed me to a small cottage", she started obediently, and he noticed how hard she worked to gain control over the emotions that assaulted her, "He raped me once. Twice. And then he…"

She was crying now, sobbing soundlessly into his black robes while she tried to keep the pain from her voice, but he could feel it to his very bones.

"And then he took a knife and he… he…"

He knew what Lucius liked to do with knives. He had seen it. Christmas must have set him on edge and so he took it out on her. His grip around her small frame tightened as red hot fury rose in him.

"He won´t hurt you here, Hermione", he whispered in her ears, "Nobody will hurt you now. I won´t allow it. I promise. Do you believe me?"

"He said he marked me", she whimpered against his shoulder, "He said I belong to him now. I´m his personal bitch. He said he´ll come and find me if I´m bad."

"He´s lying, Hermione. He´s lying."

Gods, how he wished the bastard were here now. He would gut him without a moment´s hesitation. He would kill him for what he had done to his…

"If he comes here, Hermione, I´ll kill him. I swear I´ll kill him. Do you believe me?"

She felt heavy in his arms, like dead weight, and fear drove the hot rage away. "Talk to me, Hermione! Do not fall asleep. Do you believe me?"

An answer, barely audible. A clumsy stirring of the body in his arm, "Yes…"

"That´s good. Keep talking, dear. How long since he did that to you? How did you get back?"

He had reached the door to her room now. Blasting it open with a muttered spell, he traversed the room and laid her down on her bet, carefully, gently. He hastened to the cupboard where she kept potions and bandages and threw it open.

"How long, Hermione? Talk to me!"

Cloth rustled as she moved on the bed. Her face was whiter than the linen now.

"Twenty minutes… half an hour… I fell unconscious… When I woke up again he was gone…"

He chose a blood replenishing potion. Something against the pain. But he didn´t dare give her a sleeping potion or something that would take the pain away completely. She had to feel what was going on with her body, to alert him if necessary.

He felt darkness flood his soul. Violent, furious thoughts… but he pushed them back. Later. She needed him now. He wouldn´t let her down and chase his personal demons instead. He would save her.

"He´s gone now, Hermione. He´s gone. Drink this. It will help you."

She was too weak now to lift her head, but he helped her and she drank the potions obediently.

"But he´s still here", she protested weakly, "I can still feel his hands hurting me, his fingers burning on my skin", suddenly, she threw back her head, yelling in pain, "His hands are all over me! Gods, it burns!"

He was losing her. The potion wasn´t working fast enough, and if she slipped away now, there was no returning for her. She needed to hold on, just for a few more minutes until he had healed her.

"Hermione", no reaction, "HERMIONE! Damn you, girl, answer!"

A tremble went through her body. He used his wand to cut away her cloak and school uniform, exposing underwear that was drenched in blood.

"Hermione!"

He ran the diagnosis spell over her abdomen, knowing what to expect. But the confirmation made him sick nonetheless.

"Miss Granger! The ingredients of burning salve! Stop dawdling and answer me this instance!"

His sharp teacher voice snapped her out of her daze. Always one to oblige teachers, Hermione slurred out the ingredients that she could have recited in her dreams.

"A basis of aloe and bees wax", she groaned.

"That´s right. Quicker, Miss Granger, I do not have all night", he snarled while he performed the healing spells, praying desperately that he wasn´t too late. The internal bleeding had swollen her belly and the bed linen was drenched with the crimson wetness.

"Crushed leaves of frostflower… seaweed extract… eucalyptus…"

It took him five minutes to heal the bloodbath of torn flesh and veins that Lucius' knife had caused, all the time listening to Hermione´s weak voice reciting the receipt for salve more precisely than any of her peers could have done in his best state of health. He wanted to cry, to howl with pain and frustration, but he kept his voice clipped and under control. His hands worked with the steady efficiency of a potions master while desperation darkened his mind.

Then, after about a quarter of an hour, his spells gave him the confirmation he had hoped for. She would live. The potions were taking effect and her face regained colour. Some sense of reality slowly returned to her eyes.

Severus remembered to breathe. His nostrils filled with the repulsive stink of blood, sweat and pain, and he went over to the window and opened it. The cold air helped to slowly clear the last shreds of panic from his head and a flick of his wand cleaned her and the bed from the traces of her close escape.

Slowly, feeling suddenly like an old, tired man, he walked over to the mantelpiece and lightened a fire. He then moved an armchair to the side of her bed and allowed himself to sink down into it. He felt wobbly with relief.

She would live.

Weakness overcame him, and he cradled his tired head in his hands. They had been lucky, but the danger wasn´t completely over yet. Searching for the deep sources of strength that had kept him going for so many years as spy, he straightened again and examined her face critically.

"Hermione."

Her eyes had fallen shut while he had not addressed her. Now they opened again, slowly, and he could see her struggle, how heavy her lids were, how seductive the sleep. She fought the dangerous deeps though, brave and stubborn as she was.

"Can you hear me, Hermione? Do you know where you are?"

She gasped, but he could see her fighting the shock that had taken hold on her system, using the pain, channelling it to regain some control over her body. Her eyes cleared, and a spark of recognition entered them.

"Severus." She whispered, as she had done that eternity of twenty minutes ago.

He smiled warmly at her. It was something that came easily to him by now, although he had never smiled much in his life.

"How do you feel?" He asked slowly.

"I… I feel so cold… and dirty."

"You lost a lot of blood. The coldness should recede in a few minutes. Just relax and breathe deeply."

But the cold didn´t seem to be her most pressing worry.

"…shower…" She croaked.

And, despite her utter weakness, she started to force herself into an upright position. Only the small moan that escaped her clenched teeth made the astonished Snape snap into action.

"You cannot move." He told her, softly pressing her down into the pillows again. "I healed your wounds, but your flesh is still tender. Every movement could hurt you again."

His words seemed to remind her of what had happened, for she tensed and tried to curl into a protective ball.

"Careful, Hermione," He had to stop her again. "Don´t move."

Still, her hands reached out, trembling with weakness, and started to rub her skin, up and down, up and down, in a pitiable effort to clean herself of the memories. He had applied cleaning spells while helaing her, but clearly that was not enough. She needed to rid herself of his touch, of the filth he had brought on her.

He remembered those nights when he had rubbed himself raw under the shower, trying to make the hands leave, the pain, the faces that begged for mercy…

"…shower…"

He didn´t know whether it was a good idea. She didn´t need even more hands on her now, but it was the only way to help her getting clean he could think of.

Conjuring a basin of warm water and a sponge, he kneeled down beside her bed.

"Relax, Hermione," He told her. "I will help you make his hands go away."

She hissed when the sponge touched her, her panicked eyes darting towards his face.

He let all shields around his mind fall in an instant, making sure that all his intentions and especially his wish to help her lay openly before her. He sent soothing thoughts of cleanness, and warmth, and peace through their connection, all the while not moving the sponge an inch.

Finally, she relaxed into his touch, and again he marvelled at the trust she had bestowed on him.

His movements were slow as he washed her, and he took care to leave out all the parts that might frighten her, might remind her of his hands. When he levitated her into the air to wash her back, a tremble went through her.

"…how bad…"

"Very bad," He answered, knowing her well enough not to lie. "He nearly killed you. If you had taken only a few minutes longer, it would have been too late."

She shuddered and closed her eyes, hiding from the world around her. He could see her withdraw, and barely heard her tired whisper.

"…pity…"

"Don't say that, Hermione. I'm glad you came back in time."

When he had finished washing her, she started to shiver, and he quickly dried her body with a spell. A flick of his wand clad her in clean pyjamas. He hesitated for a moment, but then decided to go through with his "cleaning Hermione" programme. Summoning a hair brush from the bathroom, he propped her head carefully on the pillows and started to comb her locks.

He had never brushed a woman's hair before. It was soothing to run the brush through those heavy silken locks that hadn´t been bushy for quite some time. He saw that Hermione had closed her eyes, and slowly, the lines of pain in her face faded.

"My mother did that to me when I was small," she whispered, her voice fading away.

After a moment of quiet consideration, he decided on a simple braid. It looked a bit twisted, but quite acceptable for his first attempt. Carefully, he readjusted her pillows and draped the blankets over here. He thought that she had fallen asleep, but when he rose from his chair, her eyelids fluttered open again.

"Thank you, Severus."

"You´re welcome, Hermione. Try to sleep now. I won´t leave you alone."

She sighed, and he waited until her eyes had closed again and her lips opened slightly in sleep, before he walked over to her desk. There was one thing he had to do before giving in to exhaustion.

Draco must have known where his father went. He had to be frantic by now. Severus summoned parchment and a quill, and quickly scrabbled a note in the hand of an adolescent, not very tidy student.

"Dear Draco

The Lioness you sent to me is great! She suffered from the journey, but now that I groomed her a bit, she will be all right. I´ll keep her safe.

Have a nice Christmas! We´ll see each other in Hogwarts,

Sincerely, your

Elrond."

His owl took care of the letter, and he closed the window behind her when he heard a rustle of bed clothes. He turned around and found her still sleeping. But all peace had deserted her. Hands clawing into the bed clothes, jaw clenched tightly and back arched in convulsion, Hermione was the picture of silent agony.

His old friends, the nightmares, had arrived again. And from the look of it, they were here to stay.

Without conscious thought, his feet took him to her side, and he took her cold, limp hand into his, remembering how his presence had calmed her once.

Be it that the memories were too strong, or that she was too far gone to be reached by the touch of his hand, the restless movement didn´t cease.

He frowned. The convulsions needed to stop or they would rip open the barely healed wounds again. But he didn´t want to wake her. She needed the sleep.

And so, the silent midnight found Hogwarts' Potions Master removing his shoes and outer robe by the bed of a student. Carefully, he lifted her from the pillows and climbed in behind her.

He was so blatantly out of role as he cradled her against his chest that even Albus would have choked on his sherbert lemons.

But her movements ceased. The nightmares receded and without waking, she leaned into the touch and consolation of the warm body that supported her.

A small smile, tired and weary even in her sleep, turned her lips upwards, and he smiled back, a strange warmth blooming in his chest while he watched Hermione Granger sleep.

He had expected to feel uneasy with this close proximity, to loathe the contact. He wasn´t one for touching, and everyone who had invaded his personal space in the past had regretted it bitterly.

But this was different. This was Hermione.

And as his gaze lingered on her once again peaceful face, a realization slammed into him so hard that only the discipline of a spy could stop a physical reaction.

Somehow, during these weeks of talking, researching and fighting, she had become more to him than just an important piece in the game, even more than a partner or friend.

She had become the centre of his life.

He didn´t know how this had happened, how a bushy haired know-it-all twenty years his junior had crept into his mind and heart to stay there.

All he knew was that his vow to protect her, once made to secure an advantage for the Order, had given him a new course in life. And that he would protect the small miracle that was sleeping in his arms right now no matter what threatened her. With his life, if necessary.

Without any conscious thoughts, his long, slender fingers started stroking her hair, letting the heavy locks runs through his hands. And thus, with Hermione leaned against his chest, his hands cradling her, Severus Snape fell asleep.

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A/N II: There! I managed it! Fluff and angst in the same chapter (sighs tiredly).

Now go stroke the authors ego and review, cause I wasn´t sure about this at all. Did you like it? Did I go too fast? Make me happy and review, and I´ll sent Snape around to brush your hair (after he´s finished with mine)!


	27. Scars

A/N: Oh shame on me, shame on me! I know I was impossible, keeping you waiting so long, but I had lots and lots to do in RL, plus I was suffering from my worst writer´s block ever! I felt this to be a crucial chapter in the story, and I wanted to do it absolutely right. Not that I am completely happy with it now, but I couldn´t bear to let you wait any longer…

I feel terrible having to break it to you, people – but the last chapter doesn´t necessarily mean the romance is about to begin. He may have realized that she´s the centre of his existence, but that doesn´t mean love – at least not lover´s love. So don´t hate me and don´t sue me, but you will have to wait another couple of chapters for _that_ to happen… (But when it happens, it will be fun!)

Another question I'd like to address: No, you haven't been given all the answers yet. I am well aware that we still don't know **why** she did it. But please believe me - there's a reason why I didn't tell you yet, and when you'll read that chapter, you will know why!

Right: You´ve seen her laugh, you´ve seen her cry – now watch her being pissed off!

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Scars

_Dear Hermione, _

_Thank you so much for your presents, they're brilliant! I love the mini-sneakoscope, and keep it around my neck for the whole time. It has already proven its usefulness, by the way, for Fred and George wanted to sneak up on us, and it screamed so loudly, they nearly got a heart attack. Well, my ears didn't work for half an hour after that, but apart from that drawback, I like it tremendously. _

_Honestly, I don't completely understand why you gave Ron those books on psychology. I think they are rather boring, but Ron tells me to say thank you for them and happily spends his days reading them, so obviously they were the right choice. Did I miss something there?_

_Now, the weirdest thing happened yesterday, you won't believe it, Hermione! Guess who wrote to me? Justin Finch-Fletchley! Told me everything about his completely boring Christmas, and then asked me if we couldn't meet somewhere over Christmas Holidays. He proposed muggle London! _

_Now don't get all excited reading this, for even if I hadn't promised you not to do anything dangerous, I wouldn't meet with Justin for the life of me. I nearly fell asleep over his letter! So I wrote him back as shortly as possible and told him that, no, we wouldn't have the time for that. _

_Isn't that absolutely weird? Fred suggested Justin was in love with me, for which I smacked him with my broomstick, but now Ron is going all puppy eyed over me everytime he sees me and tells me how I broke poor Justin's heart. It is time to return to Hogwarts, really! (Except that I will meet Justin there, yuck!)_

_Anyways, I hope Christmas goes well with you and there aren't any problems. Greet your parents from me (if you think they'd like it, that is), and don't worry too much. See you in a week!_

_Love,   
Harry_

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In the silence of a winter morning, the cold light turning golden behind her closed lids, and the warmth of Severus' chest against her cheek, Hermione slept.

Her dreams, as it would happen so often these days, were coloured in red, but this time it wasn´t the screaming, angry red of freshly spilt blood or the slightly darker shade she associated with panic and violence, but the dark, warm colour of a good wine that held her closely in a warm embrace.

She wasn´t afraid of the feather light touch though, and she didn't feel the need to run. For the first time in months, Hermione's dreams soothed her pain and fear instead of fuelling it. She took her time to wake up, enjoying the feeling of safety that had somehow spread through her during the night and now warmed her whole body like a soft blanket.

Slowly, with delicious slurriness, awareness returned. She didn´t wish to wake, or to move, or to think. Instead, she stretched luxuriously, wondering slightly about the soreness of her muscles, while her every cell enjoyed the feeling of security.

Until she opened her eyes and met black ones that rested curiously on her.

In the blink of an eye, without any conscious thought involved, she had thrown herself from the bed and was on her feet again in the far end of the room, knife in one hand, her wand in the other.

_Gods. Severus. He slept in my bed. I was in his arms! What happened yesterday?_

She tried to remember the events of the last night, but there was only chaos in her mind, snatches of pain, fear and blood, of screams and desperation, and then… warm hands that touched her, a broad chest she rested against, fingers that stroked her hair…

She stiffened at the memory. Something had gone very wrong yesterday. Something had caused him to cross the invisible boundaries she had built between them, to violate the private space she had kept although they had grown closer. And whatever the reason, she didn't like it one bit.

Suddenly, the trust she had bestowed on him felt dangerous to her, and the knowledge of his close proximity tightened the grip on her wand. What was happening with her, for goodness sake?

Severus noted with approval that she had obviously keyed the knives' portkey-function to her mind the day before. He didn´t move, waiting for her to orientate herself. But the seconds turned to minutes, and still she stood, her eyes narrowed in suspicion, her knife pointing towards him.

"It´s me, Hermione," Severus offered finally when he realized she wouldn't relax. "You´re safe."

If possible, her stance became more tense, mistrust lying heavily in the air.

"I know it´s you. That much is obvious, " She answered, her voice laced with fury. "What I don't know is what you are doing in my bloody bed!"

Severus sighed. She didn't remember. Or at least she didn't want to. This would be difficult.

"I'm sorry," He told her quietly. "I know how irritating this must be for you. But you were very restless last night, so desperate and panicked, and I couldn't allow you to toss and turn in your sleep because of your wounds. My presence seemed to calm you, so I…"

She blushed at the thought that his presence had calmed her, that she had relaxed better in his arms than alone, but then the rest of the sentence caught up to her, and all colour drained from her face.

"What happened yesterday? What did I tell you?" she asked, her voice tight with anger and fear.

"Don't you remember?" He replied.

Pain darted across her face, and the grip on her knife tightened till her knuckles shone white.

"Answer me," She whispered, nearly growled. "What happened?"

Suddenly, it seemed that the last two months had never happened, that she was in withdrawal again, caring for nothing but the barriers between them, concentrated on keeping her secrets, on maintaining the distance.

There was no trust in her face and eyes, not a trace of their former closeness. He tried to reach her mind, to send her soothing thoughts of peace and friendship as he had done last night, but his mind slammed against a wall made of steel. Her thoughts and body were closed to him. She had withdrawn into her own private world, and though he couldn't understand why fury tightened her lips and hardened her looks, he knew that he'd have to talk it through with her, if he didn't want to lose her here and now.

"You met with Lucius somewhere around midday. When you returned, it was already late. He had raped you and slashed your insides with a knife," He began to recount yesterday's events, keeping his voice level and his tone neutral.

He knew how painful this would be for her, and how she would hate to show weakness in front of him in her state, so he avoided his eyes and went on calmly, speaking slowly to let everything sink in.

"You didn't recognize me at first, but I managed to convince you that you needed help. I carried you up the stairs and to your bed. You were in a state of shock, and for a while I thought you wouldn't make it. I made you recite recipes to keep awake, and when you were safe, I wrote a letter to Draco so that he wouldn't worry. By then you were in the grip of a rather nasty nightmare, and the best way to keep you calm was to hold you in your sleep. I fell asleep somewhere during the night, too, and woke only moments before you."

Even after he had finished, his eyes remained fixed on the bookshelf, safely away from her. He could hear her breathing, quick and frightened, as if she tried to overcome some shock. A nearly inaudible sob escaped her tightly clenched lips, and he knew that she remembered now, tried to deal with the events of yesterday and her pain.

He gave her time. Only when she spoke again did he return his eyes to her, to see a tear streaked face, an expression so lost and pained that he wanted to rush over and take her in his arms. And a chin raised in defiance, eyes glittering with fury.

"You washed me," She whispered in an accusatory tone he couldn't interpret. "And you brushed my hair."

He nodded warily. It had seemed like the best thing to do at the time, but perhaps she would feel violated now.

"You needed cleaning so desperately, Hermione. You even tried to shower, though you still couldn't move from the blood loss. That was the only way I could help you. I know how much cleaning up afterwards means to you."

So he knew that, did he? Her mind screamed at her. Of course he knew. He was the most brilliant man she had ever met, and she had given him ample chance to study her habits, her beliefs, her needs. There couldn't be much he didn't know by now,

Despair clouded her mind, and she could feel the bitter taste of panic rising to her mouth. She remembered it all, now. How had held her, how he had asked her to trust him and cared for her, and how she had relaxed into his touch, had allowed him to take over control completely. How she had trusted him not only with her life, but also with what had happened to her, though the shame had burned a hollow pit into her soul.

What had she done!

All this hadn´t been supposed to happen! She hadn´t meant to get so close to him! How could she keep her secrets if she depended on him? How could she be on her guard when he made her weak like this? When he caused her to lean on him, to trust him completely?

How could she let this go on for so long? When she knew that she risked not only her future, but his happiness as well! Why hadn't she stopped him long before he came too close?

Because even now, seconds after she had realized the danger she was in, she wanted to sink into his embrace, to share her pain with him and feel his warmth.

_Damn it all, I have become weak because of him! I should have known this would happen!_

"But you promised not to!" She whispered,

"Not to what?" Confusion clouded his mind. Had he promised her not to touch her? He couldn't remember such a talk, and the deep reproach in her voice and face made him feel nervous, as if he had committed a severe felony and had never even noticed it.

"Not to mollycoddle me. Not to come too close and care about me this way."

He sighed in exasperation, finally leaving the bed and trying to walk over to her. He was still wearing his robes from yesterday, wrinkled from sleep, and normally she would have grinned at her Potions Master so out of character. Now, only her wand moved towards him, a silent threat not to come any closer.

"Are you trying to tell me this is about my behaviour yesterday?" He asked, disbelief in his voice. That I cared for you? That I worried about you and treated you like a human being, not like a thing?"

Surely she couldn't be serious about this! He hadn't pitied her! He had done everything in his power to save her because he couldn't do without her anymore. In a way, it had been the most instinctive, selfish thing that he had done for years. But somehow he doubted that she would like these insights into his mind right now.

"It would have been better to treat me like a thing, Severus," She replied bitterly. "Better than behaving this way, better than pitying me."

"For goodness sake, woman, this is not about pity!" He roared, finally at his patience´s end. "This is about giving you what you need and keeping you from cracking up!"

"I don´t need anything from you!"

"Don´t be ridiculous! I know better."

"No, you don't!" She shouted. "You have no idea what it feels like, all the pain and hurt, the shame and the fear! And it's your fault!"

He paled at her words, and she didn't know if it was from shock or from rising fury, but she was too far gone to care in this moment.

"You are telling me this is my fault?" He asked, his voice dangerously low and silky. "Malfoy rapes you and slices you into pieces, and you're giving me the fault?"

She was crying again by now, but she didn't seem to notice it at all.

"Everything was fine before you came!" She yelled, not caring that her voice sounded hysterical and breaking. "I was doing my job, and it wasn't hurting a bit! I had accepted that this was my task in life! I was made of stone and steel and my real self was tucked away too far to be even touched by Lucius' knives! I couldn't feel anything anymore!"

He could remember her now, that shaming day in his library, when he had delved into her mind for the second time, and she had seemed to him like a queen made of ice and diamonds, like a dead thing, too beautiful and hard to be alive, that couldn't be touched by anyone. He could remember her eyes, tunnels into the dark, that had held no life, no humanity, no fear. No pain.

"You can't be serious about this!" He whispered.. "You nearly died during that time! You had nearly no strength left, and no one to even notice it. Don't tell me that was better than being cared for, because I won't believe it!"

"It _was_ better," She was still yelling, anger and despair shimmering in her eyes. "I had accepted, I had given up. And then you come along, and give me back all that made this life worth living, and you care, and you… understand…" Her voice had died to a whisper while she spoke, and only his trained ears could make out her words now, as she turned around, away from him, her eyes on the fireplace.

"And now there are things to live for again. Now there is joy, and self respect, and… hope. Something for Lucius to destroy. Something that shouldn't belong to a Death Eater whore."

And suddenly, in a blinding flash of pain and sorrow, he understood.

"You deserve all these things, Hermione," He whispered. "You don't have to punish yourself for what you do. You are not a thing!"

"You have no idea what I am, Snape."

The way she spoke his name hurt more than anything she had hurled at him during their shouting match, and, without noticing it, he backed away from her.

"We have to talk this through, Hermione," He said, trying to sound in control, but out came something much more like the desperate pleading he had done during that night in Albus' office. "You can't just leave like that! We must discuss it!"

"I can do anything I want," She answered coldly, and he could see those masks, not used for a long time in his presence, slip back into place. "We agreed to that upon entering this partnership. I will go to my room now. I don't know whether I'll come back. Please remove the floo connection after I went through, and you are free to revoke my access to your chambers as well. Have a good day."

Severus knew he had promised exactly that, and a part of him wanted to comply, to let her leave and not violate her trust ever again. But he also knew that, if he let her go now, some part of her would be lost irrevocably. That she would never allow anyone to come close again.

And he couldn't let that happen. He couldn't let her end like him. So he locked the door with a flick of his wand and stepped to the left, until he stood between her and the fireplace, squarely meeting her eyes.

"What are you doing?" She hissed, her wand following his every move.

"I won't allow you to vanish like that, Hermione," He answered calmly, suddenly as controlled as if their shouting match had never happened. "Whatever you want to do afterwards, we have to discuss this."

"I don´t want to discuss it!" She shouted. "We had a deal! No talking if I didn't want to, no mollycoddling and no pity! I want to leave right now, and I never want to talk to you again!"

"But you have to, Hermione. If you want to survive this as a whole person, not a bitter shadow of once living things, the shame and the guilt must stop."

"What if I don´t care how I survive?"

"Then I will take the decision from you."

„So that's what an equal partnership with you is like? I can do without then, thank you very much."

The comment stung, as she had meant it to, but still he did not step away.

„One can't be the partner of a stone, or the friend of a corpse," He told her levelly. „And that is what you are becoming, Hermione. That is what I was for so many years. Dead to the world. I want you to look beyond your scars and see your life, Hermione!"

She laughed, a laugh so old and bitter that it made his heart ache.

„What do you know about scars," She whispered.

„As much as you do," He answered as quietly, and, coming to a decision, ripped open his shirt. She backed away from him, her wand raised in a trembling hand, but he made no move to advance on her. Instead, he shrugged the linen shirt off slowly.

„You are not the only one they hurt," He whispered, and turned his back towards her.

He heard no cry, no gasp, only a slightly louder intake of breath, but he knew what she was seeing – a landscape of criss-crossing scars, some white and nearly faded with age, some still red and angry even after years of healing.

He didn't turn around towards her, but he could feel her eyes darting over his back, following the white lines that had carved paths and streets into his skin.

„It started early with me," He told her quietly, still facing away from her, his voice mirroring the old bitterness of hers. „Since I can think, my father used to beat me and my mother, officially to establish his authority, but you know well enough why people beat children by now.

„Hogwarts wasn't much better, what with the famous Marauder's choosing me as their favourite plaything. The memory your friend Harry witnessed in my pensieve has me dangling upside down in the air, exposing my lovely underwear to the whole of the school. And they did much worse things to me over the years."

He could feel the rustling of clothes behind him as he talked, and he knew that she was slowly moving towards him. He could imagine her face, eyes wide with shock as she remembered what she had shouted at him, begging him to stop his tale, but he ignored it. This was too important.

„By the time I was drawn to the Dark Lord, only my anger made me survive, my arrogance, my desperate belief in my own intelligence. Only my mind could make me worthy, only my brilliance could justify my existence. And it was this pride the Dark Lord used to lure me in. This anger at everybody who hurt me. You asked me why it was anger with me, some weeks ago, and I didn't answer you. Let me do it now: Only anger and arrogance had the strength to keep me going every single day of my life, despite their mocking, their hate, the pain the inflicted upon me. And the Dark Lord took my anger and twisted it around until I couldn't see what was right or wrong anymore, until all I could do was fuel my hate."

His voice was hoarse by now, and the memories made him want to run away, to hide from himself. But he couldn't. He had to get the message through.

„But he didn't stop the pain. He multiplied it when I didn't obey immediately. When I didn't comply, he treated me exactly like the thing I deep inside believed to be. And I clung to him, for only he could make those feelings go away. Only he could save me from myself. And when he punished me, or when later Albus sent me back there to spy on him, I didn't resist. For somehow I knew, like you do now, that I deserved everything they could do to me, that I wasn't worthy of a life without pain.

„And I gave up what I thought too good for me. I became bitter, and hard, and stony. I became Severus Snape, bastard and brooding Potions Master. And I stayed it until, very recently, someone freed me from the dark prison of my mind, by banishing me from the place of my mortification."

Silence. An ocean of silence between them, so endless that for a moment he feared she was long gone, she had left him babbling about his past, left him alone like so many had. But then he could hear her breathing, quick and shallow, and her scent reached his nose. She was standing directly behind him, and with a voice that was clear and calm, he slammed the lesson home.

„So Hermione, after what you know now about me, do you think I am worthless? Do you think I am dirty and deserved what the world did to me? Tell me, do you believe it turned me into a thing?"

Her voice was shocked when she answered, a desperate denial of his questions. „No… I would never think…"

Suddenly, he whirled around to her and met her wide eyes, her tear streaked face with an expression of thunderous anger.

„Then how can you dare believe it of yourself? You never did anything wrong, and other than me, you chose your road to save the people you love. How can you be less than I am, when you didn't commit half the crimes I did?"

„But I..."

"But you what? Should we turn this into a competition? Who did the most horrible things in his life? Should I tell you a bit more about the wonderful experience my life has been? Do you want to know what it feels like to kill a child too young to even call for help? What point do you want to make, Hermione?"

He saw her search for words, for self accusations she could make, and falter. He had taken them away from her, all the excuses and reproaches she would recount to herself in sleepless nights, all the horrible images that flashed before her eyes. Because he had done worse. And still she respected him.

"I feel so ashamed," She finally whispered, and he saw in her eyes that she had finally reached the core and was willing to share it with him. "When I look into their eyes, those of my family, my friends, even Dumbledore, I feel ashamed. I know what they believe to be wrong or right, I know what their life is like. And I can't fit in. I have seen things, done things that would make them back away in horror. How can I ever meet my parents again, how can I look into my friends' eyes when I know what they would think of the real me? When I know I belong to a world they can only turn their back to? I have thrown away everything I once believed in, and there is nothing I have to fill that void. Nothing but the shame."

He knew what she meant, and through their locked eyes, he sent knowledge and understanding. She had never chosen the way of arrogance. She had tried to adjust, had dimmed her light, had allowed them to treat her intelligence like folly, her thirst for knowledge like some rather funny character trait. _If they couldn't even accept me before_, her eyes asked him while fearing his answer at the same time, _How can I ever hope to belong to them now?_

"You know that there is no solution to that, don't you?"

He asked her tenderly, and she answered with a tiny nod. "Those who tower above the rest will always be lonely, and people will never accept what is different. We both learned that the hard way. If you can't feel proud in what you are, you will never stop feeling that way. But if you can't conquer the shame," He went on, taking a deep breath and locking eyes again with her.

„Then feel ashamed in front of your family if you have to. Feel ashamed in front of your righteous little friends that only remained pure because they're too stupid to see what's going on around them. I can't keep you from feeling inferior and dirty with those idiots. But never be it with me, do you hear? You have lived through nothing I didn't go through before. You have seen nothing I didn't do. If I can survive what I did, you can certainly survive what was done to you. Do you hear?"

He fell silent. He knew what he was offering, but he also knew what he was asking from her. To accept what she was, and to stop hiding from it had to be the hardest thing she had ever done. It had taken him more than thirty years.

But still, he hoped with all his heart that she would find the strength to do this. He would let her leave if she wanted to, now that all was said and done. But he didn't know what he would do, alone in his chambers again, on his own, without her to talk to, to train with, to tease.

He was so lost in the frightful image of Hermione leaving his presence forever, that he only noticed how close she had come when she softly touched his chest. A chest as covered with scars as his back.

He couldn't suppress a gasp when her right index finger started trailing a faded white line across the plane of his skin.

He understood the gesture, though she wouldn't meet his eyes.

She accepted what he had offered to her.

And when his arms came up, slowly, to give her ample time to back off from unwanted touch, she leaned into him, closed her eyes and circled his waist as tightly as he did her shoulders.

If they hadn't felt too drained to think about it, both would have marvelled at the safety this embrace could give to them, the feeling of closeness, of peace, that existed in the circle of their arms. Of home.

Out there, the world might be a place of danger and pain, but here it was just them, two spies, both scarred, both too clever for their own good. Both in the presence of the deepest trust they had ever felt.

"Now then," Severus asked finally, his voice rumbling against her ear. "I think it might be time for breakfast."

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A/N: Please, please tell me if this was okay, for I will never dare write another chapter like this if you didn't like it!


	28. Secret Hufflepuffing

A/N: There it is, long and complicated, and I hope you like it! 

I once again want to thank all of you for your wonderful reviews and support. I'm sorry I haven't updated for such a long time – again -, but my life is still rather complicated at the moment, which is why I have mainly stopped replying to your reviews, too – I simply cannot find the time for it. But still, every one of your comments is highly cherished by me!

It's just that when the stress level rises to a certain point, writing becomes quite impossible for me. And shouldn't remain it a fun thing to do, not a forced thing? But I will give my very best to update as often as humanly possible, and I promise you all that this story will be finished! 

Now to your questions: No, Hermione hasn't forgotten why she started spying – and we all will find out eventually (not long now! But I have to keep up a little tension!)

I think part of why Lucius does this to her will be explained in this chapter, but anyway, the reaction of the Dark Lord to all this is yet to come, isn't it? (I'm glad I'm not Lucius!)

Oh, and to the length of this story: We have at least twenty chapters to go. At least. The final length actually depends on me and all of you – how much you want to hear from me and when the story starts to get on your nerves ;-)

Now read on and have fun, all the best, Kayly

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**Secret Hufflepuffing**

Neither of them felt the need to talk about what had happened to them over the next days, returning to their holiday routine as if that evening and the following morning had never happened.

But still, Severus felt the changes in their relationship, so subtle that a stranger wouldn't have noticed them, and yet they transformed Hermione and himself more deeply than anything Severus had ever known.

In a way, it was as if he had ceased to exist to Hermione, at least ceased to exist as a separate human being. Where she had tolerated his presence in the past but had still, half-consciously, followed his every move, noted his position in the room in relation to hers, and never let down her defences completely, she now acknowledged him with a smile, only to plunge back into her world of thoughts and words.

He could comment rudely the newest homework added to his catastrophe-pile, pace the room or even brush by her armchair without any reaction from her. Sometimes, she would prepare the tea for them and place a cup on his desk, sometimes he would refill her cup, all without a word. And sometimes, in the evenings, he would look up and find her asleep, curled into her favourite chair, a book forgotten on her lap. Then he would gather her into his arms and carry her up into her room, and she wouldn't even stir from her sleep, as if it wasn't another human being that touched her, but a part of her own body that happened to be awake at the moment.

For the first time ever, he saw Hermione relax completely, and it transformed her into a different person. Again, the changes were subtle, though it had rather shocked him to meet someone whose humour was even darker and dryer than his own. But only now, when she discussed a theoretical problem, her hands gesturing wildly and her eyes glittering defiantly, could he see that she had never really been herself before, not with her friends, not in class, and not even with him during the last months.

It was as if the constant will to fit in, to please, to satisfy had vanished, only to leave a person as headstrong and sarcastic as he was. A person that was unashamedly brilliant, and, at times, shockingly arrogant.

He enjoyed it tremendously. And when he saw the lines in her face fading, and new fire blooming in her eyes, he knew that she felt the same way.

They didn´t breach the subject of Lucius Malfoy, and the only indication that Hermione dealt with her memories was the fact that their training and its intensity had doubled. They would spend hours in the gym now, until even Severus was panting with exhaustion.

On the twenty eighth of December, Hermione drew her first blood. She watched the red line on his chest spread rapidly in shock, but Severus stopped her before she could even start voicing her apologies.

"The great thing about being a witch, Hermione," He told her while healing the cut with practiced ease. "Is that you can train as hard and dangerously as you want to. There´s not much I cannot heal, and you need the experience of real injuries – inflicting them to others and receiving them yourself. Training only in theory won't do when you are confronted with someone you must kill, or be killed by him."

"If you have that 'Don't care about the others' speech coming, stop it right there, Severus, for I've heard it often enough," Hermione answered hotly. "I have killed, and I was very nearly killed more than a dozen times."

"I know. But did you kill instinctively? So fast that you didn't even have to think about it? Or did you hesitate, asking yourself if there wasn't another way, giving your victim a chance to back out?"

Her eyes widened at the question, and her knife hand fell to her side. "What are you asking me to become, Severus?" She whispered.

He just smirked at her, knowing by now that he would be understood. "Efficient," He answered.

And instead of backing off, retreating into the gestures of normalcy she would have used before, she only raised her chin, met his gaze squarely, and nodded with a smile.

But though she seemed to deal with the memory of Lucius in her own, silent way, Severus found that the problem wouldn't leave him alone. He had no desire to see her like that ever again, bleeding, half conscious and full of pain, and he had no idea how to prevent Lucius from calling and hurting her again.

Still, he waited till New Year's Eve, hoping she would bring up the topic before he did. But the evening passed, and still she ignored his hints, dodged his attempts to turn the conversation towards anything related to spying, seemingly concentrating on nothing but their dinner.

"We have to stop him. You can't go on like that," He finally remarked during the dessert.

"I know," Hermione answered calmly, used by now to his abrupt changes of topic. "And I have a plan. But it needs some time to be prepared." This said, she continued to enjoy her chocolate ice cream with great care and concentration.

"What if we don't have the time?" Severus asked, wondering why she seemed so calm about this.

She sighed, and laid the spoon down beside her bowl.

"He is deeply sorry at the moment," She explained. "Something he always is when he oversteps the limit. You see, as far as a Lucius Malfoy can ever be capable of it, he really loves me. And he fears to lose me, so whenever he cracks up and does something as stupid as… that, he will repent. He sent me jewellery, always a good sign that he won't try anything over the next weeks. Before his more dangerous desires surface again, I will have solved the problem. I promise, Severus."

Three things were foremost on Severus' mind as he met her eyes and nodded silently. First, that she had spoken of Lucius' violent attacks as if they were a kind of bothersome routine, something she knew by heart, although she loathed it. He wondered how many jewels were stored in her Head Girl room, presented to her as a repayment by her torturer.

Second, that she had told him nothing of her plan. Whatever it was, she obviously wasn't willing to inform him, and that normally would have been enough to make him suspicious.

And third, that this was Hermione, whom he had sworn to trust less than a week ago. And strangely enough, he felt no need to question her or to test this plan she had spoken of. If Hermione was confident in its success, so was he.

So, instead of being his normal, suspicious self, he just cocked his head and scowled. "I was never presented with any jewels, not by anybody," He complained, imitating a sulking child.

She grinned in answer. "That's probably because they don't go well with your robes. But if you want to, I can lend you some of my rubies and you may test them during your first Potions class."

She chuckled at the idea of Severus, adorned with a huge ruby necklace and red ribbons in his hair, standing in front of the seventh years, but said Potions Master suddenly stood with a imperious gesture.

"Into the gym, you impertinent woman," He ordered. "I will punish you sufficiently for this. I will have to fight a grin during the whole of the first class. This calls for knives!"

And, obliging him with a mock-submissive curtsey, Hermione wandered of for yet another two hours of kicking, punching and cutting.

0o0o0o

She had known he would be there, and that he would be expecting her before she even passed the gargoyle, but when she entered his study and found him sitting behind his desk, a cup of tea in hand and his eyes twinkling madly, she couldn't fight the little knot of nervousness in her stomach.

Perhaps it was because of his reputation as an all knowing, nearly all powerful wizard, perhaps because of his sheer age, but whenever Hermione visited Dumbledore, she feared that her courage would fail her.

More depended on this plan than just the taming of Lucius Malfoy, and she wasn't sure how the Headmaster would react to her proposal. Despite his eccentric reputation and his friendly-but-nuts behaviour, he was not only a very powerful wizard, but also a brilliant general and politician. People like Albus Dumbledore didn't like to let go of power or control. They craved for it.

All she could hope for was that her arguments would hold enough weight and that Dumbledore did indeed trust Severus as much as he always maintained. That, and her silent hope that the Headmaster started to feel his old age and longed for a little relief now and then.

"Headmaster," She greeted him with a smile. "I am glad you found some time for me."

"Oh, Miss Granger, the pleasure is all mine."

They hadn't seen each other for nearly a month now, Severus having taken over her reporting duty, and the expression on his face told her that he was pleasantly surprised with the changes she had gone through.

She could almost see herself mirrored in his eyes now, the stronger, finely muscled body that had lost some of its stiffness, the face that had once been cold as ice now relaxed and entirely self confident, the skin once more glowing and healthy, the eyes not reddened and weary, but glowing with energy again.

It irritated her without end that he knew who had caused all this. Somehow, she wanted to keep Severus and their friendship as secret as the events during the revels. Whenever she thought about their time together, she felt a sort of protectiveness, so fierce that it surprised her every time. He was hers, this quiet little sanctuary they had built together was theirs, and no one was to take even a glimpse of it.

She could feel his gaze diving into her mind, so softly that, had she not been a Master Occlumens herself, she wouldn't have noticed it, and carefully directed his probing mind over to some harmless mental images, entirely unrelated to anything of interest. She smirked inwardly. The Headmaster was probably so used by now to this form of spying that he didn't even realize how futile it was with her. But who was she to steal the man his illusions.

"You look well, my dear," Dumbledore commented as if he had listened to her thoughts just a moment ago. But Hermione, who knew exactly that he had seen nothing of consequence and certainly nothing even remotely connected with Severus, could no longer be fooled by his tricks, subtle as they were, and so she simply smiled mysteriously and walked over to one of the arm chairs that stood in front of the blazing fireplace.

"May I sit, Headmaster? I believe this will be a rather lengthy discussion."

"Of course, child, excuse my forgetfulness," Dumbledore reacted instantly, conjuring another cup for her and joining her by the fire.

Silently, she sipped her tea and examined the old man. Expedient as he was in staring others into confession, he wasn't used to his own methods being turned against him. He was the first to break the silence.

"What brings you here tonight, Miss Granger?" He asked, smiling benevolently to take the edge off his question. "Of course I am always glad to see you and offer whatever support I can…"

Hermione smiled in answer and set her cup aside.

"Is it a good sign that you come straight to the point with me, Headmaster?" She asked lightly, but waved the question aside a moment later when he seemed to consider it seriously.

"No matter. I have come here to make a proposal to you, Professor. There is a player in the game that hasn't been put to task for too long, and I believe we will need his abilities before the winter's over…"

Her explanation took little time. The Headmaster was quite able to make out the pros and cons for himself. And from the secretive little smile that played around his lips, she judged that the pros seemed to be in the lead.

"Is this player aware of his changing role, Miss Granger?" He asked finally, and she shook her head with an amused smile, allowing him the impression that they shared a mutual joke.

"You know him, Headmaster," She answered, and saw satisfaction glimmer in his eyes. No need to tell him that his knowledge was, in fact, very limited. "He would never accept this position if I had asked him beforehand. He doesn't consider himself worthy. But I know he is. And we need to tie him to our cause in this war. We cannot afford to let his talents go to waste."

_I know how you crave for an occupation, Severus_, she thought, _And this is just the right thing!_

The conversation continued for some time, Hermione planting hints and dodging questions the Headmaster fired at her from unexpected angles, while all the time they smiled and sipped their tea as if this was some polite conversation out of Jane Austen and not a strategy meeting between an army's General and his master spy.

Then, Hermione excused herself with a reference to all the homework she had yet to finish, and Dumbledore waved her off with one of his brilliant smiles. She breathed out in relief when she had left the area of the entrance gargoyle, who probably reported every move Dumbledore's visitors made before they entered the office. That had gone well. If she was lucky, Severus would be already waiting furiously when she returned, demanding whether all this was her idea.

But she didn't direct her steps towards the dungeons just yet. Instead, she tightened the invisibility cloak she wore around her shoulders and made to the entrance hall and through the Great door. Now, she only had to break into Hogwarts.

0o0o0o

Twilight darkened Hogwarts' walls as Hermione reached her destination. Having circled the outer walls, she stopped right below a huge window that interrupted the thick stone well above her head. She knew that it belonged to the Hufflepuff common room as surely as she knew its entrance within the school. Being Head Girl did have its advantages, after all.

She had considered entering the common room via the regular entrance, but knew that about twenty Hufflepuffs had decided to stay for Christmas, and even during dinnertime, the likelihood of someone sitting by the fireside was quite high. And there was no way they wouldn't notice when the portrait door opened of its own accord.

That was why she had decided on the window, thanking God that the Hufflepuffs didn't inhabit a tower like the Gryffindors. She once more tightened the invisibility cloak around herself, fastening it so that it wouldn't slip off, and applied a lifting charm to her feet. When she had risen high enough into the air, she stepped onto the windowsill and peered through the glass. Three people in the common room, two boys that were concentrating on a game of chess, and one reading in the corner.

Taking care to keep them in her peripheral vision, she slipped the left hand into her pocket and extracted a long, silver beard hair that she had nicked from Dumbledore's desk. One gloved finger pinned it against the window frame, while her right hand pointed the wand to her throat.

"Vox mutatis," She whispered. Then, she raised her voice and spoke one word. "Open," She said in the voice of the Headmaster, and silently, the bars slid off. The window was open now.

Hermione ended the charm and breathed out in silent relief. She hadn't been completely sure that this would work, but "Hogwarts - A History" had taught her many useful things, more than Harry and Ron had ever been able to learn from the Marauder's Map. One of them was the fact that the Headmaster of Hogwarts could demand entrance to any room in the castle and would be granted it by the power of his voice and skin. She had hoped a hair would be sufficient, and it seemed that the Hogwarts wards weren't as fine tuned as everyone boasted. She would tell Severus about this, but only after she had completed her task.

Now she whispered another spell and a gust of wind burst the windows open. While the Hufflepuffs looked up in surprise, she used the cover of the wind to climb into the common room, and when one of them reached the window to close it, she was already well up the stairs to the boys' dormitories.

The door to the seventh years' bedrooms was slightly ajar, and Hermione thanked the carelessness of boys for that. Slowly, she opened it and was rewarded with the sight of a rather untidy room, occupied by no one except a fat, very old toad.

Rifling through the belongings on the nightstand, it took her less than a minute to locate her target. Justin Finch-Fletchley's bed and cupboard.

Harry might think that Justin was just seeking his friendship or had a crush on him, but Hermione hadn't believed in innocence for a very long time now. Justin had watched Harry, quite extensively. And he had taken notes. No one took notes when he wanted to become a friend. One took notes because one wanted to memorize something, or report on it.

And Justin had written to Harry. Harry and Ron might have overlooked it, but Hermione had realized what Justin was up to the moment she had received her friend's letter. Justin wanted to meet Harry in muggle London, away from the Weasleys, the aurors or anyone who would keep an eye on Harry.

The question was just why.

Justin hadn't joined the Death Eaters on his own accord – she would have known about a second Death Eater at Hogwarts. But he was spying for someone, and if she interpreted the movements in the Inner Circle correctly, it was either MacNair or Houseman. Both had earned much praise lately with the Dark Lord, and both had been granted private audiences more than once.

But she needed proof for this, and she needed to know why Justin was betraying his peers. So she cast a wandless sleeping spell that couldn't be traced back to her over the toad, set wards on the stairs to the dormitory that would alert her the moment someone entered the stair case and closed the door with a gentle nudge of her foot, not willing to touch anything so that her magical signature couldn't be found on anything in this room.

Then, she returned to Justin's bed and nightstand and ceased all movement, carefully memorizing the general position of his belongings.

He had taken very little with him for the Christmas Holidays, a fact she had rather speculated upon. Wherever he was spending these weeks, whomever he might meet, his things were safer in the walls of Hogwarts than they could ever be there. The sheer amounts of clothes, books and private knick knack only strengthened her suspicions. He hadn't packed like someone who was going home. He had left everything of value behind.

As she took out her gloves, which were specially shielded against traces of her own magic leaking out of her skin, and grabbed the pyjamas top that was lying neatly folded on his bed, the thought of Harry and Ron made her smile. What would they think, seeing her like this? Ron would declare it impossible, her breaking school rules like this, and Harry goggle in astonishment.

Both deeply believed in her ability to extract any given information from the library, or to organize their studying schedules in colour codes. But this – sifting through a spies personal belongings and avoiding several magical traps he had set to ensure his privacy, probably with help from the someone he worked for – this would seem to them worlds away from Hermione's normal job in the trio.

But Hermione knew there wasn´t any difference. Keeping the details in mind and seeing how they connected with the whole, that was what really mattered, whether you spied, planned a battle or wrote a complicated essay. She had trained herself to remember every hint, every piece of information from a written text, and now she turned all the concentration her finely crafted mind was capable of on Justin's belongings.

There wasn't a trace of the copious amounts of notes he had made during the last weeks of school, but she found several rolls of parchment with torn edges, and a few notebooks someone had ripped several pages from.

Many of the boxes and trunk compartments Justin used to store his more personal belongings were coded to his personal magical signature, allowing only someone with magic identical to Justin to open them (and, as Justin didn't have a twin, no such person existed in this world). But her earlier search of his clothes had taken fruit. He had left one pair of gloves behind, and Hermione turned them inside out before she put them on above her own gloves. The gloves held just enough of Justin's body scent and magic to fool the traps and allow her to open the boxes.

There were no recent letters from his parents. Strange. As long as she had known Justin, there had been a parcel or a letter from his parents at least once a week. Justin was an only child, and his mother loved him dearly. But the last letter was dated from three months ago. And as Hermione searched through his correspondence, an idea of what might have happened formed in her mind.

But she found no proof. It took her half an hour to examine his things and replace them in the exact fashion she had found them. She had checked his trunk and nightstand for hidden drawers or compartments, but had found none.

She next turned to the walls around his bed, to its headboard, and, after she had lifted the mattress with yet another wandless spell, to the bed itself. Again, nothing.

Maybe he had hidden something in the Common Room – but that seemed unlikely to her. If the Hufflepuffs were anything like the Gryffindors, nothing private was safe from them. And you couldn't hide a thing that well that a school full of nosy teenagers wouldn't find it.

But where? Had he taken the proof with him after all?

The revelation came to her as she stepped back from the bed to examine it once again in full, and her eyes fell on the bedposts. Massive, wooden bedposts. Or at least they looked massive. For the one on the right side of the bed's head was hollow, as she found out after only seconds of knocking and comparing the sound.

She couldn't detect an opening, but when she slowly ran her gloved hand over the polished wood, a crack appeared, not more than a hair's breadth. She used one of her knives, which she was by now wearing wherever she went, safely hidden in the sheaths that were strapped on her thighs, to open the crack further, careful not to scratch the wooden surface.

_What have you hidden from view, Justin_, she thought as she performed a series of revealing charms on the opening, _What could have caused you to betray your world?_

Anger grew inside her while she broke the curses and safety spells Justin had used to protect his secret, anger at the danger he was placing them all in, at a boy who was willing to choose the easy way on the back of others, but when she finally put her hand into the hole and retrieved the two photos that had been hidden inside, her anger died away instantly.

His mother. Flanked by two masked and robed Death Eaters, her green eyes wild, her chest heaving with her panicked panting, and a terrible fear, a knowledge of what was waiting for her edged into every inch of her face.

His father. Sporting a black eye, his hands tied behind his back, but still struggling against the men that held him. Nothing but worry in his eyes, nothing but love for his family and despair.

And under both pictures, bold letters that formed a simple sentence: "Do as we say, Justin, and they might survive."

She knew the handwriting. Severus had trained her to recognize the hand of every single Death Eater. This was MacNair. And he had Justin's parents.

0o0o

Severus wasn't sure why Albus had asked for his company during afternoon tea, but he was more than willing to go. It was time to introduce Hermione's triggered Obliviate, and some other ideas they had come up with during Christmas Holiday. An informal meeting over tea and biscuits was the perfect opportunity to present them to the Headmaster.

So he was rather surprised when, instead of the casual atmosphere he had expected, he found the Headmaster firmly situated behind his desk.

"Albus," He greeted him with a slight nod of his head.

"Severus! Thank you for your time. Please sit down, my boy."

Severus frowned. That "my boy" could mean nothing good. In his experience, it was usually followed by a load of unwanted advice, or, worse, by a serious questioning of his mental state. Of course, the Headmaster never would have called it that way, instead choosing to talk about "friendships" and the way they all had to stick together during difficult times, but in the past, all these big sentences could be usually broken down to one, main question: "Can you go on without breaking, my boy?"

He settled down into the offered chair without smiling, his face an unreadable mask of stone. Whatever Albus was going to throw at him, he would have to do it the hard way. Severus had long ago stopped making such conversations easy for the Headmaster.

"You can probably guess that I asked you here for a special purpose tonight, Severus," Albus began after a moment of strained silence.

He gave no reaction to this, but a hint of curiosity awakened inside Severus. Normally, Albus would begin a conversation like this with a great deal of fussing around, asking about his experiments, his classes or how he had enjoyed the holiday. He wasn't one to come to the point just like that, only in cases of emergency or huge importance. For that, the Headmaster enjoyed his role as eccentric old wizard far too much.

"The thing is," Albus continued after a moment of waiting. "That I have spent the holidays thinking about the Order and its re-organization."

_Here comes the "you're no longer needed" bit_, Severus thought, astonished by his own bitterness. He was glad he wasn't a spy anymore, and working with Hermione had been most rewarding, but only now, while sitting in this office and watching his old mentor, did he realized how much he missed a purpose for his life, a chance to employ his abilities in more than the quite indirect way of keeping Hermione from harm.

_You were a Death Eater, Severus. And you still carry the mark. Don't expect them to ever accept you as one of them. Don't expect them to value you for just what you are_, he told himself firmly.

"It was especially your… changed role in the Order that was on my mind, and the question of what to do with you, now that your life as a spy is over," The Headmaster went on, oblivious to the silent battle that raged on inside his Potions Master.

"I understand," Severus finally answered, banishing all sadness and bitterness from his voice.

The Headmaster looked up to that, his eyes twinkling and full of mischief.

"Pardon me?"

"I understand that I can no longer play a central role in the Order's business," Snape explained. _There, Albus, I'm doing it again_, he thought, _Making your job easier for you. _"Having lost my ability to spy, I am mainly a burden to the Order. I won't be able to conduct outside missions, and my influence is very limited. If you wish me to withdraw from the Order's inner circle, I will do so."

Albus actually smiled to that, and Severus found rage rising inside his chest. _He could have at least acted regretfully_, he thought.

"No, my boy," Albus now said, leaning forward on his desk and placing a comforting hand on Severus' shoulder. "I don't think you understand. After consulting with several members of the Order and carefully thinking it over, I have decided that you will become our new Spy Master."

0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0oo0o0o0o0o00o

A/N: The idea with the glove Hermione uses to imitate Justin's hand doesn't originate from my own mind, but was thought of by the brilliant Tamora Pierce, in her fantastic novel "Trickster's Choice" (you should all read that one, it's some of the best fantasy that was ever written!).

Review? Help me through those long, draining autumn days by your wonderful comments? Please!


	29. Planting the Seeds

A/N:

Here we go again, folks, and I'm happy to tell you that the next chapter wil be up in about a week, too.

Thanks again to everyone who reviewed, so there were few responses to the last chapter - I hope that's not because of the declining quality of the story? Anyways, I really hope you like this one, and it's only one more chapter to go until Harry and Ron finally find out about Hermione!

0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o

**Planting the Seeds**

"This was your idea! Don't tell me this wasn't your idea, Hermione!"

As she had predicted, Severus was awaiting her in the library, eyes ablaze with fury, pacing wildly in front of the fireplace. She had been prepared for this confrontation, but she hadn't expected the veil of sadness that had descended on her in Justin's dormitory.

She wasn't looking forward to this talk. All she wanted to do now was blurt out the things she had learned about Justin, and perhaps have a good cry on the sofa. But this wasn't the right moment. Severus needed a clear head to digest the information she would hand him, and he was into a full fury attack at the moment. Definitely not the right time to introduce a sensitive topic, she knew that by now.

So she shoved her sadness into a remote corner of her mind and thought on what she had begun tonight, and where it might lead them.

"And what, pray, Severus, are you talking about?" She answered his heated reproach with a slight smirk and flipped down onto the sofa.

"About the rather fascinating proposal – or should I say order – Albus presented me with this afternoon," He growled. "And don't pretend to be ignorant – you have planted the idea in the old man's head, haven't you?"

"Albus proposed to you," She cried innocently, ignoring his accusations. "Now, Severus, I'm really quite shocked!"

But for once, Severus ignored her playful banter, and she could see now that he was definitely furious.

"Enough! I don't need that attitude right now, Hermione. Why didn't you give me a chance to consider if I wanted this, why didn't you tell me beforehand?"

"Because you would have dismissed the idea immediately, Severus," She replied, turning serious in an instant. "You know you would have. You could never imagine yourself in such a trusted position, wielding such power and control in the Order. You still think they see you as the scowling Death Eater they only tolerate in their midst because of his usefulness."

He did scowl, now, looking quite the Death Eater part. "Stop talking psychology," He warned her.

"That's not psychology, that's simple observation, Severus. You would never have offered yourself for the position. And what's worse, you would have forbidden me to mention it to the Headmaster. This way, I just told him about my idea. The decision was all his, and I'm quite sure he didn't make it on his own. Obviously, they want you to be their Spy Master. And don't tell me that you don't want the job, Severus! Even now I can see that greedy glitter in your eyes!"

He snorted at the idea of his black eyes glittering greedily, but something in his stance relaxed nonetheless and he finally sat down.

"I thought Albus would banish me from the Order," He admitted after a moment of silence. "And I accepted my dismissal before he even made the point. I even offered to leave on my own accord," He snorted again, this time with a soft tinge of sadness.

"Well, that shows what you know, doesn't it," Hermione answered smugly, then she leaned forward in her chair, just as Albus had done some hours before, and touched his hand. But somehow, with her the gesture was the most natural and calming thing in the world, and he found his sorrow dying away.

"They couldn't do without you," She simply sat, her eyes open and warm and affectionate. "There is no one as good as you, Severus. Well," She added after a moment. "And no one as evil, in fact. Even Moody doesn't compare to your nastier moods."

"Oh, thank you very much indeed," He finally matched her tone, and she breathed in relief. He had forgiven her. "And how, pray, is this part of your plan, Hermione?"

"That I can only tell you if you accepted the position," She teased him. "Otherwise it would be top secret and I'd have to kill you."

He sighed in defeat, but couldn't hide the amused twitching of his lips. "I resign to your impertinence, woman," He told her. "And yes, I accepted the job."

A bright, relieved smile lightened her face, and only now did he realized that she had been indeed worried about that point.

"It's not just part of this plan. It's a logical development, and I prefer to be sure who deals with the things I find out. The thing I found out tonight, for example," Her voice changed, becoming darker and older, and Severus leaned forward in his chair to meet her eyes. "Is not for everyone in the Order to know."

_Show me_, he thought, and she opened her memories to him.

She felt his silent approval at her methods and resourcefulness, his slight irritation at the ease with which she had overcome the wards, but when they reached the hollow bed post and its hidden secret, she felt Severus hiss in anger.

_Who?_ He asked and she answered with a picture of MacNair, matching it in her mind with one of the hooded figures that held Justin's mother captive. The man's size and form fitted perfectly.

"I agree," He said darkly, ending the connection. "You couldn't have shown this to the Headmaster. How do you intend to use it?"

She leaned back on the sofa, closing her eyes in exhaustion and resting her head on the corner.

"That is a stupid question, Severus," She sighed. "I will use him the same way you would."

"I thought so," Snape answered and, rising from his seat, moved behind her. Hermione noticed the pride in his voice, and it took away some of her sadness.

"Who will plant the information?"

She groaned in pleasure and relief as his slender hands started to knead her sore and stiff shoulder muscles. "Draco," She answered. "If he is willing."

0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o

Time seemed to sped them through the remaining days, and before Hermione had come to fully realize it, Sunday afternoon had arrived and with it the students that were crowding the halls and dormitories of Hogwarts again.

As the time she had agreed on beforehand with McGonagall drew nearer and nearer, Hermione found herself standing in the library, her baggage shrunk and pocketed, not able to tear herself apart from this place.

She didn't want to leave.

Every cell of her being screamed at her to stay, not to give up this one safe haven she had finally found. Despite the darkness that clouded over their heads, these weeks had been the happiest she could remember since her early childhood, and the knowledge that it would end now, that she would have to return to the students and their problems, to the crowded meals in the Great Hall and the meaningless lessons she could have taught herself made her feel sick.

Coldness gathered around her heart, and one look in Severus' face showed a mirror of her feelings.

He didn't want her to leave, either.

One step was enough to bridge the distance between them. One step and she was in his arms, embraced so tightly that there wasn't any room for sorrow or fear in the circle of their arms.

"We will see each other every evening, and during meals and lessons," He whispered in her ear, his voice rougher than the silken sound she was used to.

She nodded against his chest. "It's just…" She started and he nodded her on in encouragement. "It's just that for the first time in years, I have felt… at home," She whispered.

They remained silent for a long time, just as they had that morning in her bedroom. Then, Hermione stepped back and broke the circle.

"See you at lunch," She said, sending him a soft smile through her thoughts.

Silently, Severus watched her leave, astonished at the sudden emptiness of his chambers.

The invisibility cloak hid Hermione from view as she travelled upwards through the many corridors of Hogwarts, upwards until she reached McGonagall's office door. There, she waited for about five minutes, entering after her Professor.

This time though, she didn't leave through the office door, but crossed the room to the private chamber the transfiguration teacher had given to her some months ago, silently hoping that Draco had received her message.

He obviously had. He sprang up from the sofa when she slipped into the room, but he knew her well enough by now not to embrace or even touch her without her consent. Only when she crossed the distance between them, a bright smile on her face, did he fold her into his arms.

"Draco," She sighed in relief, glad that he was safely back at Hogwarts, far away from his mad father and his snobbish mother. "How did your Christmas go?"

"Awful," Draco answered dryly. "They didn't talk to each other. Well, except when mother was screaming and shouting and throwing things. I never saw her so uncontrolled. She even threatened him with the aurors. That was when he stormed off for three hours, to meet you."

"Oh," Hermione murmured, against her will drawn back to the events of that night. So that was why he had seemed out of his mind. If he hadn't been the mad monster Lucius was, she might even have pitied him for it.

"I was frantic with worry," Draco admitted, releasing her from his arms to study her face and body carefully. "Only when Snape's letter arrive could I relax somewhat. When father returned, he had a look on his face… I really thought he might have killed you that night."

"He very nearly did," She admitted quietly, only to be embraced tightly once more.

"How are you love," Draco whispered into her ear. "What did he do to you?"

One look in his face told Hermione that Lucius had – at least once – refrained from bragging in front of his son. She was deeply tempted to let him remain oblivious to the dirty secrets of his father, but she needed him if her plan was to work. And so she told him.

When she had finished her tale, leaving out what had transpired between Severus and her the morning after, she saw tears of anger standing in Draco's eyes.

"We must stop him," He whispered. "There must be something we can do!"

"I'm glad you see it that way," She told him, relieved that he was willing to help her. "I have a plan. It would protect me from his viler moods while not angering him. But it would need your help to work, and you would have to play the loyal Death Eater son for me."

He snorted. "If you can live through these meetings with the Dark Lord, I should be able to act out Malfoy the arrogant prick, don't you think? What do you want me to do?"

She suddenly grinned at him, a playful twinkling in her eyes. "Our new Spymaster wishes to recruit you."

0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o

She met Harry and Ron in the Common Room, where they were waiting for her over a game of wizard's chess.

Both looked surprised at her changed appearance, and only now did Hermione realize how much good the training lessons and the regular sleep had done to her over the holidays. Telling herself firmly that she would need more concealing robes now that she filled out her old ones all too finely, she explained the changes away with the many nice country walks she had undertaken with her parents.

"See?" Ron commented. "I always said some other hobby than studying would do you good. It's just not natural to spend all your time hunched over a book, Hermione!"

"The only thing not natural in this room is your absolute disinterest in your marks, Ronald Weasley," She snapped back, assuming the slightly bossy tone everybody associated with her schoolwork-obsession.

Ron raised her hands in mock-defeat. "No offence, 'Mione," He told her with a grin. She huffed, and he turned around to Harry.

"Man, how are we to survive this summer when she's going mental already?" He whispered, but to Hermione's trained ears it was easily understood.

She turned away and watched the flames flickering happily in the fireplace. There was a strange tension in her body, but only when she touched her shoulder did she notice that the muscles of her back had stiffened again. Gone was the relaxation of the last week, and gone was her good mood.

Bleakness descended on her like a heavy blanket, muffling her thoughts and hiding her emotions. _So here we go again_, she thought, fighting the sudden sadness, _Welcome back to your reality, Hermione._

They entertained each other until dinner with stories about their Christmas experiences, Ron and Harry telling her about snowball fights, noisy dinners with the Weasley clan, and Hermione spinning out fictions about long talks in front of the fireplace, cooking with her mother and whatever else muggles did on their holidays. It wasn't hard for her to fake happiness, though, when she remembered the last week, and her friends, obviously sensing how content she was, seemed relieved.

_They _are_ very good friends_, she thought when she noticed how much the two obviously had worried about her Christmas. _If only they weren't so terribly Gryffindor!_

"Let's go get dinner," She proposed, earning a thankful look from Ron. "I'm starving! One of the by-effects of those country walks, I guess."

"Yes, let's do," Ron agreed, surprising no one, and together with Ginny and Neville they left the Common room.

The noise of the Great Hall very nearly overwhelmed Hermione, who had become used to the quiet and safety of Severus' quarters over the last weeks. She flinched every time someone yelled or touched her by accident, and her wand hand itched terribly.

_There's no danger_, she told herself again and again. _Relax, the teacher's are looking after us, there's no danger at all. _

But unfortunately, she was far beyond believing such reassurances, and they didn't help against her quickly blooming headache in the least.

Five minutes into their meal, the doors of the Great Hall banged open and in strode Severus, an unusually foul expression on his face.

"What's gotten into that one?" Hermione asked the others while she sent their Potions Master a thought-smile and a warm greeting.

"Must be this new thing the Order lets him work on. We don't know what it is, but Mum and Dad were talking a lot about it over Christmas," Ron offered, but hastily lowered his head when Severus scowled in their direction as if he had heard them.

Only Hermione could hear his smirk echo inside her head. _Good afternoon, dear_, He thought. _How is life back among the dunderheads?_

_They are driving me crazy already_, She admitted after he had taken his place on the High Table, helped himself to dinner and scowled at everyone in his near vicinity.

A sardonic grin grazed his lips for a moment. _Well then, perhaps I should increase their workload a bit so that they don't have time to bother you?_ He inquired. _It would be my pleasure. _

_Good gods, no!_ She protested in silent terror. _They would only want me to help them, and if you ever read one of their Potions essays, you know what a terrible fate that is!_

_I never read anything Potter hands in_, Snape sent. _I just scribble some degrading remarks and hand out one bad mark after the next. _

She stared at him in such unveiled disbelief that Ron noticed her look.

"What's the matter," He asked, punching her lightly in the shoulder and Hermione flinched. She had forgotten how easily Ron and Harry dealt out touches and embraces. It would be hard to control her reflexes, and even harder not to show how little she liked physical closeness these days.

"I just remembered the essay Snape gave us over the holidays," She answered hastily. "I only have twelve inches and I think we should at least write…"

"Good gods, Hermione, give us a break!" Ron groaned and turned back to his food.

_You aren't really_, Hermione raised her glass of pumpkin juice to hide the look she sent to the High Table.

_No,_ disappointment coloured the thought. _Of course I read every one of them. Unfortunately. But imagine how wonderful it were…_

His upturned eyes and the sneer towards Gryffindor table made her grin, and she quickly concentrated on her mashed potatoes.

_Draco's willing and ready_, she told him in between eating and talking to her Gryffindor friends. _We will execute the plan tomorrow morning_. _See you tonight?_

_Absolutely_, he answered, and, rising abruptly, left the table with a short nod to his colleagues and a last scowl in their direction.

0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o

It is a truth universally acknowledged by men and women of the profession that a stupid, identified spy is always better than an unknown one. Thus Justin, who had never been a real danger before, now had become a treasure to them. For who would mistrust information that stemmed from your very own spy, especially information that seemed so very comfortable and interesting to you.

Draco had noticed Justin the moment he and Theodore Nott had entered the corridor and made sure to drop the keywords "Hermione Granger" and "my father" while they passed him. He could see Justin's eyes widen in interest, and silently agreed to Hermione's evaluation.

The boy was a rotten spy. But all the better for them. He fed Theodore stories about his father's position in the Inner Circle while they left the crowded corridors around the classrooms and walked towards the meeting point he had agreed on with Hermione.

Theodore's father was a Death Eater, too, albeit not one as powerful as Draco's father, and before Draco's world had changed so brutally after that night in the Ministry, they had been good friends. Or what could be called friends among Death Eaters to be. Draco had never known that there could be something better than plotting and planning and enjoying their superiority to the rest of the school, until Hermione had shown him what friendship really meant.

He had moved away from his Slytherin friends now for a long time, preferring silence to his former bragging and showing off. But Christmas with his parents had put him back into his old pureblood habits, and acting the junior Death Eater once more felt easier than it should.

But at least he was finally able to do something beyond recounting his father's letters. Together with his instructions, Hermione had handed him an invitation to dinner on Saturday evening, where Snape would talk to him about his further willingness to "keep an eye on the Slytherins".

Finally! And with Snape as the new Spymaster, Draco would feel less awkward handing over information than with that ever twinkling Dumbledore whom Draco mistrusted as deeply as every good Slytherin would.

After crossing over to the east wing and descending a few stairs, they reached the corridor he had agreed on with Hermione beforehand, and found her leaning against the wall, right on cue.

Even though he knew it was all an act, Draco had to suppress a shudder when he saw her. She looked worse than during those weeks after withdrawal, her face pale, her hair bushier than ever before, and her shoulders bent with tiredness. She straightened herself wearily, just as Draco heard Justin's footsteps behind them stop.

"Draco. Nott," She greeted them, with just the right mixture of arrogance and submission. "What are you doing here?"

"That's nothing of your business, mudblood," Draco drawled coldly and saw her flinch. "Only because my father keeps you as his whore, you needn't think that we would ever consider you our equal. Off with you!"

During his words, her face had paled even more, and as Nott broke into disdainful laughter, she walked away from them, just a little too fast to hide her hurt completely.

"Saw how she looked?" Draco asked Nott, who nodded in delight. "That's my father doing to her. He doesn't tell me as much as I'd like," He snickered evilly. "But from what I heard, one of his little games nearly got her killed over Christmas. Wouldn't surprise me if she didn't make it much longer – no mistress of father survived that long. Must be a great bitch, that dirty little mudblood."

And on they moved, their talk continuing on the tracks of hot Slytherin girls they would like to invite to the Prefect's bathroom one night. Only when they rounded the corner did Draco risk a look backwards over his shoulder. There stood Finch-Fletchley, painfully visible in the corridor, a notebook in one hand, with an expression of pure, unadulterated shock on his plain face.

It seemed that their rat hat taken the bait.

0o0o0o0o0o0o0o

Review!


	30. Master of Secrets

A/N: Welcome back, everybody, to some plotting and some action!

I noticed too late that perhaps the function and importance of a Spymaster isn't known to everybody (silly me!). A spymaster is the leader of the intelligence department of an organisation, country or state. He normally reports directly to said organisation (in this case Dumbledore) and is thus one of the most important figures in a government. In the Order, which is chiefly concerned with collecting and distributin information about Voldemort, the spymaster's role is an exceedingly powerful and important one.

Or so I think.

On to the show, and please, please review!

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**Master of Secrets**

Saturday afternoon came, and as Ron and Harry expressed the dire need to walk down to Hogsmeade, Hermione accompanied them grudgingly, silently hoping that she wouldn't be too late for dinner in Severus' chambers tonight.

He had invited not only Draco, but also McGonagall, whom he had asked to assist him with his new duty as a Spymaster, knowing full well how much time this work would consume in addition to his teaching hours and training sessions with Hermione.

"Let's visit Sirius' old cave," Harry suddenly proposed, raising Hermione from her thoughts about more efficient listening charms that could be placed within the Slytherin common room.

"I don't know, Harry," She frowned, trying to hide just how little she liked this idea. "It could be dangerous, leaving the village, and it's still very cold."

"Oh come on, Hermione," Ron groaned. "Allow the man some space! Hogsmeade isn't dangerous at all – what could happen to us around here?"

A sharp remark already on her lips, Hermione took in Harry's hopeful face and decided to remain quiet. _They would go anyway_, she thought resignedly, _No need to antagonize them over this._

Surprisingly enough, everything seemed to work out just fine. The area around the cave was completely deserted, but she nevertheless took the caution to erect several wards around the place before she followed the boys into the cave.

They spent more than an hour inside the cave, and when Harry conjured a fire that warmed their hands and freezing feet, Hermione let herself believe that maybe, just once, nothing would go wrong around the Boy Who Lived.

But of course, that hope would prove as futile as always.

They were on their way back to the village when Hermione's heightened senses warned her. A movement to their right. Something was following them through the shrubbery, moving just as fast as they were. No animal. A human, then, but no wizard or muggle strolling casually through the forest could be that quiet.

Whoever he was, he was trying very much not to be noticed, and as far as Ron and Harry went, he had succeeded. They had neither noticed their shadow, nor Hermione's sudden tension, which was a relief to her. If something mysterious happened to the boys, they usually shared one spontaneous reaction: causing a lot of noise and rushing off to investigate.

She didn't need that right now. Not when the person hiding in the shrubbery was who she suspected him to be. So she casually fell behind Harry and Ron, moving slightly to the left and positioning herself between her friends and the unknown follower.

"It's terribly cold out here, don't you think so?" She asked them in a slow voice that wouldn't carry far. "Would you mind speeding up a bit to the Three Broomsticks?"

"Sure," Ron agreed, not bothering to keep his voice down. "But shouldn't you be used to the cold after all those outdoor walks over the Holidays?"

"It's warmer where my parents are hidden," She improvised. "It wasn't even snowing down there!"

"Lucky you," Harry commented. "At the Burrows, we couldn't leave the house for three days because of all the snow. We nearly drove Ron's mum mad!"

As they quickened their steps, nudged gently by Hermione, so did the unknown pursuer to their left.

Inside the safety of her mind, Hermione was snarling curses that would have made Harry and Ron blush in embarrassment. They were too slow! At this rate, they would need another ten minutes back to Hogsmeade, and there was more than one good opportunity for an ambush along the way.

In this tempo, they would never make it.

Coming to a decision, Hermione slowly eased her wand out of her sleeve where she kept it hidden these days. She felt awful doing this, but it was the only way to prevent a far greater evil. "Persuado," She mouthed, hiding the spell with a simulated cough.

As the persuasion charm took hold of her friends, she clapped her hands as if a sudden idea had seized her.

"Know what? Let's run to the _Broomsticks_. First one there will get a free butterbeer from the others."

Normally, this would have produced nothing but a groan in the two boys, but now they were nodding eagerly, and before she had even fully re-sheathed her wand, they were tearing away, speeding towards Hogwarts in a sudden fit of energy.

They nearly made it. The houses of Hogsmeade were already visible when a curse was flung from the bushes to their left, and Hermione, who had taken care to keep a length behind the boys, could do nothing but jump in its way.

The curse hit her right in the back and turned her tender skin into a mess of burnt flesh. _Great,_ She thought angrily, _and I can only sleep on my back!_

Fortunately, the two boys were much too into their competition to notice when she stumbled and fell. From the cover of her wand, she sent another Persudao at them that would hopefully sent them right to the _Three Broomsticks_ before they noticed her absence. Then, she collapsed in the snow, and prayed that the attacker would take her for unconscious.

The moment she heard his hurried steps pass to her left, she jumped up again and dove into the shrubbery, taking care to stay as silent as possible.

MacNair had nearly caught up with the boys when she had a clear aim at his back. _I can't kill or maim him – I'm supposed to be on his side_, she thought, and aimed for his feet instead.

"Immobilus," She hissed, and he stumbled over his suddenly unresponding legs. "Throw your wand away and give up, MacNair!"

He growled like an animal as he twisted around to meet her eyes. "I always knew we couldn't trust you, mudblood," He spat in disgust.

"Wand away," She commanded, and he obeyed without hesitation. He had seen what she was capable of.

She conjured ropes to bind him, then moved closer to make sure he was safely tied up.

"Oh, come on, MacNair," She mocked as she checked the knots. "Don't tell me you are following the bidding of our Lord tonight. To ambush Potter all on your own and risk his death. That burning hex was pretty dangerous."

"You're on his side after all!"

"I serve no one but the Dark Lord," She shouted, using her Legilimency skills to imprint that belief deeply into his mind. "And I will see Potter dead at his feet, but only when the order comes from Lord Voldemort himself!"

Letting her eyes wander over him, she sighed with irritation, hiding not in the least how little she thought of his intelligence.

"I will follow them now to make sure they didn't notice anything. Don't try such a stupid stunt again, MacNair."

She walked away from him and had nearly reached the edge of the little clearing when suddenly, MacNairs voice behind her rose in a triumphant scream.

"Crucio," He shouted, and pain washed over her, sending her to the ground in a twitching, convulsing heap.

A rough hand twisted her wand out of her grip, and she looked up at MacNair, who grinned evilly and pocketed it away. In his hand was yet another wand, pointing at her and sending the curse through her bones and flesh.

_Hid a second wand_, she thought as the pain engulfed her completely. _Severus warned you he was the extra-careful type! Stupid, stupid, stupid!_

As agony filled her every cell and breathing became progressively difficult, she let her body go limp completely, her eyes rolling up in her head and her hands, which had clawed at the ground in anguish, cease every motion.

She bit the inside of her cheek hard, and, as she felt the warm blood on her tongue, opened her mouth enough to let it escape and run a trail of red down the side of her face. As she slowly ceased to convulse and twitch, something that took her considerable strength of will when all she wanted was to howl in pain, MacNair finally seemed to notice her state and stopped the curse abruptly, his face suddenly worried.

For in her imitated state of half-consciousness, Hermione looked to all the world like someone who had just been dealt an overdose of Cruciatus, probably with lethal consequences.

_I guess you don't want to tell our Lord that you killed his precious mudblood, MacNair, do you_, she thought, and, as MacNair lowered his wand and half-kneeled down beside her to check on her condition, _Good boy. Let's play, now._

And suddenly, she shot upright, her muscles screaming in protest and the pain inside her rising to a new peak, but before her tired legs could collapse under her, she was sitting on his chest, a knife at his throat and his extra-wand in her left hand.

„They are my prey", she hissed, and the dark fury in her eyes made him flinch away from her touch.

She must look outright horrifying right now, she suspected, her face coated in blood and her knife glittering in the sunlight, as she cowered over him like a cat would over its victim. Not like the humble mudblood he had come to know in the Inner Circle, but like a heathen goddess, cruel and merciless.

„No one will take their heads but the Dark Lord, and I will hunt them down for him. Cross me again, and you will wish the Dementors had gotten you, MacNair!"

He nodded, a silent, panicked sign that he had understood, and she stupefied him with a flick of his own wand. Only when she had retrieved her wand, conjured ropes and placed his first wand just out of reach, pocketing his extra-one for her own needs, did she give in to the pain that rocked her body.

For a long time she just lay motionless, curled up in the snow, forcing air into her burning lungs. Then, when she found she could breathe and move again, she straightened up and dried herself with a spell.

"Have a good night, MacNair," She murmured and enervated him before apparating to the entrance of the _Three Broomsticks._

The girl that entered the pub had nothing in common with the dangerous fighter that had defeated a Death Eater not twenty minutes ago. A well used glamour had reddened her cheeks and done away with any traces of the fight, and the happy smile in her face made many heads turn appreciatively in her direction.

"Sorry boys," She smiled as she reached Harry's and Ron's table. "I lost my shoe lace and had to fall back a bit. And then I met Professor McGonagall in front of _Zonko's_. I will have to return to Hogwarts in a few minutes, because she needs me for an important experiment!"

Both looked a bit disgruntled at the idea that yet another afternoon together would be cut short, but when she asked about the winner of their running competition and bought Ron, who had used his longer legs successfully, his victory-butterbeer, they allowed her to leave without much further ado.

_They really _are_ good friends_, She thought as she headed towards Hogwarts, no longer bothering to hide her limping, _If only my whole body wouldn't hurt like hell._

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When she finally reached Severus' quarters, handicapped by her burnt back and general painfulness, she was, as usual, too late.

Professor McGonagall and Draco had already arrived, and, as it seemed, finished the business part of the evening without her. They were occupying the group of sofas nearest to the fireplace, and looked up in expectation when she entered through the tapestry.

"Severus is in the kitchen," Draco announced, and Hermione smirked at his proud use of the given name. Obviously, Severus had finally included him into his "colleagues" category, it seemed.

"Is that a glamour, or are you so happy to see us, Hermione," He inquired, obviously mistrusting her healthy appearance.

"A glamour," She admitted, just as the kitchen door opened and Severus entered, carrying a tray with utensils and plates. She ended the spell with a shrug, and the gasp McGonagall couldn't suppress told her all she needed to know about her outer appearance.

"What happened," Severus asked, placing the tray on the table and walking over to her quickly.

"Me, Harry and Ron had a little collision with a MacNair down in Hogsmeade," She explained aloud to the benefit of their visitors. McGonagall didn't know about their mind-talk yet, and she wasn't sure if Severus wanted to tell her.

"Luckily, they wouldn´t notice an attack if it jumped up and down in front of them," She continued, only now noticing how tired and irritated she was. "But it took me some time to get rid of our friend MacNair and convince them that everything was normal."

"What happened to your face, Miss Granger," Professor McGonagall inquired with worry. "It's covered with dried blood! How…"

"Oh, don't fuss, Minerva," Severus interrupted her unwirsch. "Those are just scratches. Her back is the real problem. Turn around, Hermione. Any curses on it?"

Hermione smiled at him, touched by the fact that he knew her well enough to judge her health from her posture and movements. She complied and heard her transfiguration teacher gasp once more, this time with probably more reason.

„Careless", Severus muttered, examining the wound critically. „Why didn´t you shield yourself?"

„It was meant for Harry", she explained, „All I could do was take it in his stead and mask it."

While he cleaned and healed the cut magically, she sent him her memory of the attack and her reaction to it.

_Well done_, his approving voice echoed in her mind, _Handled quite elegantly, apart from the second wand. We´ll make a Slytherin out of you one day._

_I sincerely hope not_, she retorted playfully and ended the eye contact.

„The strange thing was that he seemed to know exactly where we were going", she mused aloud.

„What´s strange about that?", Draco inquired, „It´s a Hogsmeade weekend. Everybody from the school was there, even the Professors!"

„Yes, but we haven't visited that cave for over a year. Justin can't have told MacNair in advance where we would head. Which means that they either have a means of spontaneous communication, or that Justin was meeting him, anyway, and added our whereabouts as some little bonus. I wonder if…"

That was when the clapping of the kitchen door roused them from their thoughts and they turned to their dinner. Severus had enlargened the little table Hermione and he used to eat at and decked it with fine china and silverware now.

Jane presented Hermione with a wide smile and Draco with a warning look, probably because of all the stories Dobby was spreading about the Malfoys, shook McGonagalls hand and advised Severus to keep "a grip on his temper at least for the evening". Then, leaving the table's occupants dizzy and slightly overwhelmed, she apparated away for another evening of teaching.

While they enjoyed Jane's excellent dinner, Severus and Minerva happily engaged in their usual bantering. Minerva had read yet another muggle book that "fitted Severus perfectly", this one being "Wuthering Heights", and was able to recite long, dramatic passages from memory, which Severus countered with lengthy passages from the Odyssey and Iliad, which, he said, showed clearly that someone with the name "Minerva" could have no sense of character judgment at all.

Initially, Draco had been shocked to see the teachers of the very competitive houses on such friendly terms, but after he had overcome the first panic of being seated between the two most bickering persons on earth, even he joined the conversation, placing one or two dry remarks in his Potions Master's defence.

When Minerva accused him of aiding his Head of House, Severus just raised his head a little higher and informed her that he was very well able to defend himself and not in need of it, anyway.

"Who defends the truth can only earn honour," Draco cheekily quoted one of Godric Gryffindor's more cheesy mottos, and Minerva couldn't hide her grin.

But Hermione didn't participate in the banter. She was watching the others and concentrating on her meal, silently going over the day's events again and again.

Until she looked up and into Severus's eyes.

_You are worried_, he thought at her, his amusement vanishing immediately. _Why?_

_I might have misjudged the danger of Justin_, She admitted silently. _This castle is just too gossipy to control the information inflow completely, and a scene like that today mustn't happen again. Imagine Harry and Ron had been alone!_

_I will convince Albus to schedule another meeting with your personal bane of existence and his side kick, _He proposed._ Perhaps the Headmaster and I together can imprint on them the consequences of their thoughtlessness._

_That wouldn't solve the problem with Justin, though_, she objected, and not only because she knew how Snape would behave towards Harry and Ron during such a meeting.

_Then we have to find a way of controlling Justin a bit more safely or remove the danger he poses_, Severus answered, curling his hand absently around his wine glass. _Any ideas?_

_Only to expose him to the Order, and I don't think that would be a very wise course of action_, Hermione answered slowly, her thoughts displaying clearly her unhappiness with that option.

The others around the table had fallen silent, Draco recognizing what they were doing and trying not to disturb them, and McGonagall watching them with an unreadable look in his face.

"I wonder what we should do about Justin," Severus introduced the topic aloud. "What do you think, Minerva?"

"I think that I never knew Legilimency could be used that way. It is rather remarkable," McGonagall replied, surprising the others.

Severus sighed. "Sometimes I wonder if anybody ever managed to keep something from you, Minerva," He anwered good humouredly.

"Not for long," She retorted, and this time, even Hermione couldn't suppress a chuckle.

"Back to Justin," She brought the discussion back on trace, but to her surprise it was Draco who took up the thread.

"It seems to me that we have three options, if we want to prevent something like this from happening. First, we can remove Justin from school or free his parents, thus ending his job as spy. Second, we can persuade him to work in concert with us as yet another double agent," He directed a short smile towards Severus and Hermione, who were listening intently.

"And third," He continued. "We can find an effective and secure way of controlling what information he hands over to MacNair, and how soon. I was thinking along the lines of that Obliviate you used on me. Perhaps we can alter the spell so that he stops Justin from handing over information too fresh or too important."

"The first option should be our last resort," McGonagall took up Draco's thought. "I would like to keep the possibilities Justin presents open as long as possible. We should, however, find a way to protect his parents, in case of MacNair deciding that Justin's use has ended. I would propose to locate them and keep a guard on them."

"Valid point," Snape agreed. "I think we can rule out the second possibility. From what you two tell me," He nodded towards Hermione and Draco. "And from my own experience in class I'd say the boy is a rotten spy. He isn't even able to serve one master sufficiently. If we approached him, he would betray his intent immediately.

"Your idea about the Obliviate however," He continued, flashing a short smile at Draco. "Is worth considering. We could plant an order in his mind to report everything to me, via owl or whatever, before he goes to MacNair. That would give us time to evaluate the information and react if necessary."

"But isn't that terribly risky," McGonagall asked. "If MacNair realizes Justin's mind has been tempered with, or ever decides to bring the boy before Voldemort, he doesn't stand a chance!"

"True," Severus agreed. "Protecting Potter in this way would increase the risk for Justin."

"This means playing with an innocent life, Severus," McGonagall said warningly, clearly not liking the direction they were heading.

Severus smiled thinly to that comment. "I will spare us all a philosophical discussion about the nature of innocence," He answered. "Your point, however, is valid."

Suddenly, he turned around to Hermione, who had followed the discussion silently, her eyes dark and thoughtful.

"What do you think, Hermione," Severus asked. "After all, you discovered him, and that makes him your responsibility in a way. Protect him, or put him to further use, risking his life in the process."

Draco felt anger rising inside him at Severus' words. He knew how responsible Hermione felt for everyone around her. To place this burden on her shoulders seemed entirely wrong to him.

But Hermione remained calm, and when she finally answered Severus' question, it was with the cool professionalism of the spy, not the emotions of the Gryffindor.

"I believe we must take the risk," She said quietly, and when McGonagall leaned forward in her seat to protest, she raised her hand in a silencing gesture.

"I know what I am saying, Professor, and I know that it can mean the death of both Justin and his parents. But war isn't fair, and innocent people die in it every day. Who am I to decide which one to save – Justin or the persons that can be protected with the help of this extra-knowledge? Justin's stuck in a situation that is dreadful but stable, and he hasn't approached a teacher or student for help with this."

She sighed in weariness. "We can only win this war if we keep or eyes on the whole, something I learned from watching Professor Dumbledore. And, to put it bluntly: On the long run, Harry is much more important than Justin's life."

Silence enveloped them. Gone were the fun and banter they had felt before, and all eyes turned towards Severus.

„I agree with Hermione," He said, his face grim, and, after a break that seemed too long to the silent group. „We are decided then. Justin's parents will be protected as best we can, but Justin will remain a spy for MacNair, controlled by me."

And Hermione, her face drawn and her eyes glittering in the firelight like diamonds, nodded slowly.

„His death be upon my shoulders," She whispered, and it sounded like a prayer to them.

McGonagall just looked at her, all protest forgotten, her eyes old and unreadable.  
"You really have grown up, my girl," She finally said. "I don't know whether to be sad or proud."   
"Be glad," Severus answered when Hermione didn't react, still lost in thought. "For we couldn't have done without her in this war." 

0o0o0o0o

A/N:

„Wuthering Heights" features one of the best known English brooding heroes. Go and read it, it's great fun!

Odyssey and Iliad: Athene, the Greek equivalent of Minerva, has taken a rather severe liking to the famous trickster Ulysses in these epics, and her decisions on his behalf seem – at least to me – more than questionable sometimes.


	31. Out in the Open I

** Out in the Open I**

Remus Lupin could have slapped himself. Staring down at the rather large, but definitely completely empty vial, he wondered how this could have happened.

He cursed his own carelessness. He had become far too reckless in the use of the Wolfsbane Potion. Now, he needed to take it tonight for the full moon tomorrow, and he had nothing left.

_Now that happens when you get too comfortable, Remus_, he told himself angrily, _Constant vigilance!_

Which left one problem.

Severus was already with Albus, discussing some preliminaries before the Order meeting would start. Some preliminaries that seemed to concern Ronald Weasley and Harry Potter as well, most probably their rather dangerous habit of vanishing from the Common Room at night.

Remus thought hard while leaving his quarters. Severus had asked him not to enter his rooms without warning anymore, but Severus wasn´t there, he knew that for sure, and he hated to disturb him and the Headmaster, especially for something as embarrassing and potentially dangerous as him forgetting his potion.

He knew exactly where in his laboratory Snape kept large supplies of the Wolfsbane, and had by now learned to apply the finishing touches to the rather unstable potion all by himself. No need to disturb, then.

Still, he felt nervous and guilty when he pressed his hands against the darkened tapestry. He hadn´t been in there for more than three months, and Severus would be furious if he found him there.

When he entered Snape´s library through the hidden door, the huge room was dark except for the flickering light of the fireplace. He started to cross over to the winding staircase, when his ears, sharpened by the nearly full moon, took up a sound that made him stop in his tracks.

Breathing, over by the fire, coming from a big and comfortable sofa, on which he had often sat while Snape and he were discussing the outcomes of their experiments.

"Severus?" He called out silently. No movements on the sofa, only the sound of breathing, shallow and short. Somehow, he associated it with illness. Carefully, he came nearer.

"Severus, I´m sorry, I didn´t want to disturb you and I needed my potion. I thought you were with Albus… Oh my God!"

The smell of blood had hit him straight in the face. Someone must be hurt very badly to smell like that.

Forgetting his excuses, Remus rushed over to the sofa, his heart beating fast and painfully in his chest. Had they finally managed to get their traitor down? At least he was alive – he could still hear him breathing.

"Lumos", he whispered quietly, and the room was so suddenly bathed in pale light that he could barely bit back a scream at the sight before him.

It was Hermione Granger, battered and bruised, only the shadow of the energetic, commanding girl he had come to like. And everywhere, there was blood. Blood soaking her torn school uniform, blood sticking her hair together and painting her face and neck red.

Her left leg was standing out in an unnatural angle, and her face, as far as he could discern this under all the blood, was swollen from a cruel beating. Someone had not only hurt her, someone had tried very hard to destroy her.

"Miss Granger", he called her in a breathless whisper, but she didn´t react.

What should he do? She probably shouldn´t be moved, but Severus fireplace wasn´t connected to the floo, and she needed medical care, desperately so. Besides, he would not leave her in here alone, in the place were she had been abused that way.

After a moment of hesitation, he gently took her up and cradled her in his arm. A whimper escaped her lips, born from fear and pain. It was a sound he´d had never associated with Hermione Granger, and he cursed Snape for turning her into this.

How had it come to this? As cool and distanced as their relationship had become over the last months, Remus had always respected the other man, though he hadn't shared his opinions about teaching.

But to hurt a student? No, he corrected himself as his eyes fell on the limp form he carried through he corridors of Hogwarts, not only hurt her. Tortured her. Destroyed her body and perhaps her mind.

Had Snape gone mad? Was he an impostor, like Moody had been three years ago? Or had the end of his spying released something inside Snape, some darker desire that he had fulfilled in other ways before?

His mind switching wildly from deep worry for the student in his arms to furious anger towards his colleague, Remus rushed down to the Potions classroom and used its floo to transport him and Hermione to the infirmary.

Madame Pomfrey, alerted by their arrival, let out a shocked gasp at the picture she was presented with.

"What happened?" She whispered as Remus carefully laid the girl down on one of the pristine beds. "Who did this to her?"

"Snape," Remus answered coldly, and was rewarded with another gasp. "I'm going to get him for this, Poppy. Just don't let anyone except Dumbledore and myself near her at the moment, will you?"

Madame Pomfrey nodded mutely and Remus rushed out again, not even waiting for her to start her work. He had to get to Snape before the man discovered his victim had vanished. Remus knew well enough how dangerous a wizard Snape could be, and that his best chance was to catch him unaware.

The distance between infirmary and the Headmaster's office seemed longer to him than ever before, though it took him less than three minutes to reach the stone gargoyle and bark the password at him.

All his thoughts were fixed on the bleeding, moaning Hermione Granger and the man who had done this to her. This was why he ripped open the Headmaster's door violently, not even bothering to knock.

His eyes focused on Snape immediately, who was standing by the fireside in his usual intimidating posture, obviously snarling at Harry and Ron. They, like Dumbledore, jumped when the door banged loudly against the wall, but Remus didn´t notice them. His whole being was concentrated on Snape, a terrible wrath building inside him.

"You bastard," He shouted. "What have you done to her?"

"Now, Remus," Albus' confused voice tried to calm him. "I'm sure there is no reason for such a tone!"

"Oh, but there is, Headmaster," Remus growled, slowly advancing towards the Potions Master. "For it turns out that your precious spy was a perverted monster after all!"

He had nearly reached Snape, who had risen from his chair and was watching him with a cold sneer on his face.

"It must be full moon approaching, Albus," He commented mockingly. "I don´t understand a word he´s saying."

"You know very well what I´m talking about, so sod that arrogance, Snape!" In one swift movement, Remus grabbed Snape by the throat, dragged him out of his chair and pressed him against a wall. Snape struggled, but taken by surprise, he had not a chance against Remus werewolf-strength.

"How could you do this, Snape?" Remus eyes filled with tears of disbelief and disappointment.

"Do what, Lupin," Snape snarled. "Repress your Gryffindor idiocy for once and try to make sense. And let me down this instance!"

"She´s your student, for God´s sake," Remus shouted, ignoring Snape's words. "And you have destroyed her! How could you do that to a human being? You tortured her!"

Realization and horror dawning on Snape´s face, he closed his hands around those of Remus.

"Are you talking about Hermione?" He demanded to know.

Harry´s and Ron´s eyes widened at this question, but none of the men noticed them. Dumbledore had finally stood up, his hands grabbing the edge of his desk hard, his eyes for once holding nothing but worry and surprise.

"Hermione? Don´t you dare call her that ever again! When I am finished with you, you will hope you had never met her! You see Albus?" Remus half turned to the Headmaster, an expression of wild fury on his face, "He knows what I am talking about! He even admits to abusing her!"

"What have you done with her, you stupid fool?" Severus demanded, his voice a barely repressed shout.

"What have _I _done?" Remus couldn't believe his ears.

"I went to your quarters tonight because my Wolfsbane had run low," He growled, his hand tightening around Snape's throat. When I entered your library I found Hermione Granger on your sofa, bruised and full of blood, her leg completely mangled! I´ve taken her to Madame Pomfrey, of course. The state she´s in! I have never believed the rumours, but you really are a monster, Snape!"

"Bloody fool!" In a motion so swift Remus couldn´t even see it, Snape had performed wandless magic, hurling the werewolf backwards until he crashed into the opposite wall, were he steadied himself with effort and shook his head to banish the dizziness from his head.

Snape had already crossed over to the door of the study. "I must get her back to my quarters immediately. Take care of this, Albus", he asked, no, commanded Dumbledore, and was out of the room in a full run. They could hear his fast steps down the stairs, then nothing.

Harry, Ron and Remus stared after him, unbelieving and shocked.

"You can´t let him go like that, Headmaster", Remus said urgently, "He will hurt her! It is your duty to protect Miss Granger!"

"Are you saying that Snape abused Hermione in any way?" Harry wanted to know in a shaking voice. Ron was staring at the open door as if he could still see Snape´s departing silhouette.

"Not just abused", Remus answered grimly, too angry to care that he was talking to a student at the moment. "More like beat her up and let her bleed herself to death!"

He turned to Dumbledore again, anger visible on his face, "I can´t believe you´re just standing there, Albus! If you won´t do anything, I will!"

He made over to the door, but Dumbledore´s tired voice stopped him in his tracks.

"I promise you that Miss Granger is in no danger from Severus. I would really prefer to talk about this here, in my office. Neither Severus nor Miss Granger need us trailing after them!"

"You didn't see her, Albus," Remus protested angrily, his hand on the doorknob. "And we all know you trust Snape blindly! I have always followed your command in this before, but I tell you one thing, Headmaster: Until all this is cleared, and Hermione has explained it to me herself, I won´t let her out of my sight for a second."

This said, Remus sprinted out of the office to follow Snape into the infirmary, with Harry and Ron hot on his heels. Dumbledore followed in a slight distance, his face worried and edged with lines of weariness.

So it was out in the open, finally.

When they caught up with Snape, he had already left the infirmary again, cradling the limp body of Hermione to his chest. She looked better now, the nurse having obviously cleaned her and repaired her robes, but the badly twisted leg still made a sickly feeling rise in Remus' stomach, and, judging from the choking sounds behind him, it caused the same feeling in Ron and Harry.

"I was on time, Albus," Snape informed the Headmaster, completely ignoring the angry teacher and students that followed him. "I have applied a sleeping spell that should suffice until we return to my quarters. Fortunately, Poppy had only started to clean her when I arrived. I took Hermione and obliviated Poppy. She won´t be able to tell anybody. We were quite lucky."

"You took her out of the infirmary in this state?" Remus couldn´t believe his ears, nor his eyes as he saw nothing but relief on Dumbledore´s face. "But she´s been…"

"Tortured fits it quite well, actually," Snape cut in dryly. "Tortured by the best. Albus, I´ve got no time for this! I have to return her to my quarters immediately. If she awakens somewhere else…"

"Are you afraid she could tell somebody what you have done to her?" Remus snarled, still not believing what was going on around him. And this was the man he had trusted his life with countless times!

Snape just sighed, exasperated, and rushed down the dark corridor towards the dungeons once more.

It was Dumbledore who turned to them, his face tired and old, once more trying to explain.

"Severus hasn´t hurt her in the least, I can assure you three. Hermione has been in a… difficult situation lately, and Snape has been helping her to go through with it. I would prefer to talk about that in my office, if you didn´t mind."

"Oh, but we do mind", Harry answered angrily, "Hermione would never have gone to Snape with her problems! She hates the greasy git as much was we do!"

"Whatever you might be saying, Albus, we are staying with her," Remus snapped, patience failing as he followed the fast strides of Snape down the corridors.

Only Dumbledore´s presence and his obvious trust in Snape kept him from grabbing Hermione and vanishing with her lifeless body. The grim faces of Harry and Ron, who were matching his fast pace and shooting murderous looks at their Professor´s back, told him that they felt the same.

They caught up with Snape in front of his office door. He turned around, and anger once again blazed in his eyes.

"Out of the question!" It was not even a command, simply a statement, and normally, Remus would have accepted without thinking twice. But this was not about him.

"I will not leave her alone with you, Snape," He hissed, his wrath matching that of his old school enemy.

Again, Snape turned to Dumbledore, ignoring the three angry figures beside him completely.

"This is impossible, Albus. When she wakes up and sees them, she will go completely mad. I will not risk her well being for the stupidity of those imbeciles."

"She will go mad with fear when she sees you, you bloody bastard!" Ron shouted, one more turning to the Headmaster imploringly. "Professor, how can you allow him to even touch her? He hurt her!"

"Unfortunately", Dumbledore explained to Severus, "They are not believing a word I say. So in order to prevent further riot, we will have to let them stay with her until Hermione awakes and can explain everything."

"Obliviate them, then", Snape demanded coldly, and for one moment, Dumbledore smiled in remembrance of that night in his office so long ago, when Hermione had demanded the same thing to be done with Snape. How alike they were!

"I fear this is not an option, dear boy," He answered quietly, but with the same finality he had employed that night. "We will come with you."

Snape´s eyes swept over Remus, Harry and Ron, judging them and not hiding the loathing he felt for them.

"Come then," He said grumpily. "We have no time to lose!"

He left no time for Harry and Ron to wonderingly gaze at his hostile and barren chambers, nor did he acknowledge their shocked faces when they followed him through the secret doorway.

"Where was she lying?" he asked Remus, critically examining the room.

"Shouldn´t you know best," Remus replied bitterly. "Where you… deposited her?"

"Where?", there was not even anger in Snape´s voice anymore, only worry and urgency.

"Over there," Remus pointed to the sofa he had found her on. "By the fireplace."

Severus nodded and carefully, even gently, laid her down onto the sofa. With practiced ease, he removed her wand from the pocket of her cloak, then he reached out and pushed up her skirt.

Harry gasped and tried to rush over to them, only to notice that he was held in the very firm grasp of Professor Dumbledore, along with Ron, who had tried to do the same thing. His desperate eyes met those of Remus, and found the same feelings mirrored in them: anger, impotence, and disbelief.

Remus eyes grew wide when Snape´s hands moved upwards along Hermione's thighs. He wanted to reach over and stop those violating hands, despite Dumbledore´s warning look, when, suddenly, the upwards gliding skirt uncovered two black sheaths, one on her left and one on her right upper thigh, held by strong leather cords. Carefully, Snape unsheathed two daggers that were glittering in the firelight, and then opened his cloak, only to reveal similar sheaths on its inside, were he securely fastened Hermione´s daggers.

Then, he carefully tidied Hermione´s clothes and covered her with a soft blanket. He positioned a chair besides the fireplace, where his face was illuminated by the flames and he himself could clearly make out Hermione´s face.

Finally, he turned around and walked back over to them.

"Choose a seat, if you must", he invited them without enthusiasm, "She will sleep for a while, and there is nothing to be done until she returns to consciousness. But sit where she can´t see you immediately. It is dangerous if she awakens and sees something unexpected."

"We would never endanger her in any way", Remus protested angrily.

Snape smiled to that, and Harry and Ron, who had never seen their Potions Master smile this way before, were shocked by the way it changed his face. Suddenly, he seemed younger, softer, and, in a strange unusual way, attractive. Both shuddered at the thought.

"I didn´t think of that", he answered dryly, "I meant dangerous for you. Catch Hermione on the wrong foot, and she might snap your neck with her bare hands."

"Ridiculous," Harry hissed: "Hermione couldn´t ever do such a thing. She wouldn´t hurt a fly. Besides, she isn´t even good in sport. She´d have no chance against Remus!"

Again, Snape´s smile illuminated his face, only to vanish without trace after a second.

"You´d be surprised," he simply said, and once again gestured over to a group of chairs in the back of the sofa.

Slowly, hesitatingly, they followed him, none of them willing to sit down and resume an atmosphere of polite discussion, but at the same time not knowing what else to do.

Remus was at a loss. When he had found Hermione covered in her own blood, everything had seemed completely clear to him, but by now, he wondered if he hadn´t seriously misjudged the whole thing.

Something strange was happening here, something completely out of his grasp, and he realized that he must be missing some vital pieces of the puzzle.

"Shouldn´t we heal her wounds or something?" Ron disturbed his thoughts, uneasily watching the back of Hermione´s head.

Snape shook his head.

"Too dangerous," He explained. "I don´t know what spells they have used. Sometimes, they prepare nasty surprises to make sure that she doesn´t ask for help. Besides, if her injuries had been bad enough to need healing immediately, she would have called me. If she just goes to sleep like this, sleep is exactly what she needs."

"You seem to have developed a nice little routine here," Harry commented bitterly. "How often has this happened to her? And who are "they"?"

With a gesture of his hand, Snape waved the questions aside. "I´ve got no time for this, Albus. I should be near her when she wakes up. Do the honours, will you? After all, you were the one who insisted on telling them."

Snorting in disgust, Snape left the little group and settled into the chair he had placed by the fire. He took a book from the mantelpiece, a slim volume bound in red leather, and opened it at a marked page. Moments later, he seemed to have forgotten their presence.

Remus asked himself whether Snape provoked them deliberately, or if they simply didn´t matter to him. Only once had he seen Snape so focused on a single task, and that had been four years ago, when he had watched him prepare the Wolfsbane Potion, one of the most difficult potions that had ever been brewed. There was something about the way he cared for Hermione Granger, an intensity and concentration that bewildered Remus.

"Explain", he simply demanded now from Dumbledore, but with less vigour than before.

The story Albus told them was absurd, completely unbelievable but for the fact that they witnessed proof this very moment. According to the Headmaster, Hermione had approached him four months ago with the news of her inclusion in the Death Eater's inner circle. By now, she had become one of the most valuable informants of the Order and a personal favourite of Voldemort. Snape, Albus told them tiredly, was training her in the art of spying and assisting her with the "by-effects" of her work.

Wide-eyed, their mouths slightly open, Ron and Harry listened to the wild story of "Hermione the double agent", and Remus doubted that he looked much more intelligent than the two boys.

He had always considered Hermione a sensible girl, very bright of course, but in a way more normal than Harry and Ron, rather grounded and certainly much more careful than the boys. This just didn´t make any sense.

"But why should she do that?", asked Harry rather desperately, trying to grasp the idea of a Hermione so different from his own Hermione, "And why shouldn´t she tell us?"

"I don´t believe a word of this", Ron said angrily, "And Snape proves it. She would never trust the bastard!"

Dumbledore´s reprimand died on his lips when they heard a stifled sigh over from the sofa. Hermione was waking up. Calmly and without the slightest haste, Snape closed his book and waited.

Seconds later, she opened her eyes and groaned.

"Gods! I´m getting too old for this", she complained, trying to sit up.

Suddenly, there was a noise behind her as Ron rushed over to the sofa, his arms reaching out for her, and his relieved voice calling her name. Snape´s angry shouting was lost in a wild shriek of rage and fear, as Hermione half twisted around and blindly went for Ron´s throat.

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A/N: 

Finally, dear readers, we have reached the point of discovery! I hoped you like this chapter, the continuation should follow in about a week. Tell me what you think!


	32. Out in the Open II

A/N:

Right! I hadn't planned on updating this so soon, but I rather underestimated the evilness of last chapter's cliffie – sorry for that!

A thousand thanks for your reviews, I really hope this is to your liking!

And yes, Ron is dense – you have no idea yet!

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**Out in the Open II**

It was a good thing that Snape had removed the daggers, Remus thought later as the chaos had died down again, or Ron would have been dead only seconds after he had touched Hermione. Reflexes kicking in, she had attacked him with an efficient viciousness that shocked him more than her injuries had before.

Her long-drawn shriek mixed with the screams of Ron and the voices of Remus, Harry and Dumbledore, who had leaped up as well and rushed over to help Ron.

Although Hermione couldn´t use her legs and Ron was much stronger and bigger than she, he couldn´t defend himself against her. Hermione clawed, bit and scratched, she plunged her elbow into his face, punched him with her fist and tried to push her fingers into his eyes, all the time holding on to him with her other arm. Ron hadn´t got a chance, he could only try to protect his face as well as possible and scream her name over and over again.

Before the others could come to his aid however, Snape pushed them away roughly and slowly approached the fighting couple.

"Keep them away from her, Albus," Snape commanded, lips white with fury, and Dumbledore obeyed without a moment´s hesitation, grabbing the arms of Remus and Harry and pulling them out of the way.

Completely ignoring the howling Ron, Snape carefully positioned himself behind Hermione, all the while taking care not to touch her.

"Hermione," He shouted into her right ear. "It´s me, Severus. I´m going to take your hands now, Hermione. There´s nothing to be afraid of, everything´s all right! I´m going to take them now!"

Suddenly, his arms shot forwards and grabbed Hermione´s wrists, while he continued to call her name and identify himself. The fighting ceased. Air streamed from Hermione´s lungs in a sob, and she collapsed backwards into Snape, leaning heavily against him as her legs couldn´t support her. Slowly, they slid down together until they half sat, half lay on the floor, Snape whispering in her ears and embracing her tightly.

"It´s alright, Hermione. Relax now. I´m here, there´s nothing to fight against. You´re in my chambers. You´re safe. Close your eyes and listen to my voice! Everything´s alright!"

Finally, she relaxed, let her head fall onto his chest and closed her eyes. Snape slowly detached one hand from her trembling body and waved them back to the group of armchairs.

Numb with shock, Harry and Remus literally collapsed into their chairs, while Dumbledore led a bloodied Ron, who was hiccupping hysterically, to a seat and quickly examined his wounds. Hermione´s handiwork had been admirable – there was barely an inch of skin that wasn´t gushing blood or other liquids, but a whispered spell removed most traces of the fight.

None of them spoke, not daring to alert Hermione to their presence once more. They had, finally, understood, what Snape had meant when he´d called her "dangerous".

Then they saw her eyes open again, immediately searching for Snape. She relaxed visibly when she found his face directly above, gazing down on hers.

"What happened", she asked quietly, her voice confused and broken like that of a little child

"It can wait for a minute, Hermione. Injuries first", Snape answered, his voice silky and soft like a warm embrace, "Let me help you to lie down."

He swooped her up in his arms and carefully placed her on the sofa once more. A hand gesture moved his chair to her side, and he sat down, his eyes not once leaving her face.

The tenderness and worry in his black, glowing eyes frightened Remus speechless. He had never seen Snape care so much for another being.

"I´m sorry I overreacted," She whispered, sounding frightened. "Someone crept up on me, I think. Did I hurt you, Severus?"

"Don´t worry," He repeated patiently."It can wait. There´s no danger and no hurry."

Suddenly, his tone changed again.

"Well," He said, sounding… as if he was playfully teasing her, Remus realized in surprise "I see that you managed to ruin a set of robes… again!"

"Sue me!" She laughed.

It was the ruin of a laugh, hoarse and raspy, but it held real amusement, and Remus once more saw his own confusion mirrored on the faces of the boys. Dumbledore´s face, on the contrary, was unreadable, frozen to a mask of pain and regret.

"Your leg?" Snape asked, again pushing her skirt up. She tried to help him, but he stopped her movements with a hand.

"Obvious, isn´t it," she retorted dryly. "He invented a new curse. Surprise, that! And guess who had to test it?"

"Charming, I must say," Severus commented, his tone as dry as hers, "Slicing combined with a burning and a whipping hex, isn´t it? He´s getting more innovative every month. No further curses on it?"

"Not that I noticed", Hermione answered neutrally, "But I passed out a couple of times, and who knows what he did when I wasn´t watching. One of his nastier habits, that."

"I´d better run a diagnosis spell then, wait a moment."

They kept the dialogue running while Snape examined and healed her leg, a mad mixture of jokes and efficient information passing between them in a code that showed their intimacy even more than Snape´s strange behaviour beforehand.

Remus watched in grotesque fascination as they were working hand in hand, or rather mouth to mouth, like an experienced team of researchers. How long had they been doing this? Healing and talking while no one noticed anything? What the hell had caused Hermione to come to Snape? Every single one of the Order members would have helped her willingly!

_But no one would have known what she needed as well as Snape_, Remus realized while he listened to their teasing. _He has been through this, too. He probably suffered the same. But he was all alone_.

Meanwhile, Snape had applied a cleansing spell, healed the scratches and smaller wounds that were covering her arms and legs, and mended her split lip.

"Any internal bleeding?" He asked now, every trace of humour leaving his voice until it was completely neutral.

"No," she replied tiredly, "No mudblood-fucking tonight. Our plan seems to have worked. Besides, they had other… toys." The last word was only a whisper, but it was the first part of the sentence that caused Remus to turn to Dumbledore in shock. The old wizard had flinched under Hermione´s words like under the blow of a whip.

_He knows about all this_, a small voice whispered in Remus´ head, _He knows and he allows it to continue_. Another thought crossed his mind: How many others of the Order knew about it?

He wasn´t sure if he wanted an answer to that.

He examined Ron and Harry from the corner of his eye. Both had understood Hermione´s words perfectly well, he could see it in their faces. Ron´s skin had turned sickly white, and Remus could see tears standing in Harry´s eyes.

_The shouldn´t have discovered it like this_, he thought angrily.

_But Snape tried to protect them in a way_, he realized suddenly, a tight knot of guilt building in his stomach, _It was me who insisted to bring them here. Bloody fool that I am!_

"Tell me," Snape´s silky voice ended his thoughts.

But instead of the report they had expected, silence settled on the two figures near the fire. Severus was leaning forward in his chair, his eyes locked with hers as if they were transporting hidden messages. Then, he nodded abruptly and leaned back, breaking the eye contact.

"Nothing important then," He acknowledged, as if ending a silent conversation.

"You know that I would have told you immediately," She answered, and he nodded again, beginning with the healing procedure for her leg without another word. Silence resumed.

"What happened just now, Severus?" She finally asked wearily. "Did I imagine it, or was there someone else in this room, someone… attacking me?"

"They are still here, Hermione," He answered slowly, and Remus saw her small body stiffen in reflex. "But they didn´t attack you. Weasley, Potter and Remus found out everything. They are here because they fear for your well-being. Dumbledore is here, too."

"W…why?" Her voice was small, and trembling slightly. Severus calmingly touched her hand and explained in short words about the incidents of the night. For a moment, she didn´t react at all. Then she nodded slowly, and with a groan raised herself into a sitting position. She didn´t turn her head to look at them.

"Help me stand up, Severus," She requested quietly.

"You should be resting…"

"Please."

Silently, he accepted he plea and laid his arm around her shoulder. Still displaying the same careful tenderness, he helped her up. She hissed as her left foot made contact with the floor, but then steadied herself and finally stood without Snape´s support. Then, slowly, she turned around.

Her eyes darted to Snape, who nodded, nearly not perceptible, then they danced nervously around the group of men she now saw for the first time. She didn´t meet their eyes.

"I´m going to take a shower now, and a change of clothes," She announced quietly. "Then we can talk."

"Hermione," Harry started unhappily, but she shook her head and turned over to the staircase.

"I need a shower," She whispered again, and slowly climbed the steps to the next floor, Severus warily following her process with his eyes.

Not daring to speak, Ron, Harry and Remus sank back into their armchairs.

When Hermione had climbed to the upper level, Snape returned to them, a dark shadow besides Dumbledore's chair.

"I am going to order some food and make tea," He explained wearily: "Hermione will take her time." He didn´t have to add what they all could hear behind his words: She usually does.

"Should we get her some spare clothes?" Ron offered, simply to do something, anything, if it rescued him from this nightmare.

"She has clothes in her room upstairs," Snape declined the proposal.

"**Her** room?" Ron´s question contained a good deal of sharpness.

Snape sighed, unnerved, and turned to Dumbledore. "As this discussion seems to be unavoidable, you should perhaps fetch the others? They have a right to be present."

Dumbledore nodded, changed a short, questioning look with Remus, and, as the younger man seemed controlled enough not to attack Snape the moment they were alone, followed Snape over to the tapestry that served as magical door on this side of the entrance.

Again, Snape placed his hand on the soft material and whispered something undistinguishable. Dumbledore stepped through the lighted opening, vanished, and with swift strides Snape crossed the room and left through a door they hadn´t noticed before.

They were alone, and silence fell heavily on them.

"So its´s true," Harry said after a while, voice and countenance bleak as a barren landscape. "She´s a Death Eater."

"She´s a spy," Remus contradicted him forcefully. "That something entirely different!"

"The way she talked!" Harry didn´t seem to have heard Remus´ remark. "As if it was completely normal to her!"

"Sometimes, joking is the only possibility to survive experiences like these," Remus tried to explain. He had recognized some of the cynicism Snape had shown over the years in Hermione, but she lacked his cold bitterness, and he believed that Snape was the one to thank for that. "She´s lucky that she´s got Snape."

"Lucky," Ron bit out angrily. "They are torturing her, raping her, using her as a plaything, and he´s supporting it! Have you seen how he touched her? As if he bloody owned her body!"

Before Remus could answer to that, a door clapped and Snape reappeared, a house elf following closely. Both were carrying trays, but the view of Snape doing chores couldn´t amuse them tonight. Silently, they arranged plates with sandwiches, earthenware mugs and a steaming teapot on the small table by the chairs.

"Thank you, Jane. Now the potion please," Snape said and the house elf vanished with a plop´, only to reappear after barely a minute with a large bottle.

"Your Wolfsbane potion," Snape told Remus as he handed him the bottle. "Not that we forget the original reason for this nice little assembly."

Remus flinched, embarrassment and shame at how badly he had mishandled the whole situation filling him once more, but Snape ignored his reaction completely, slowly settling down in an armchair instead.

"Hermione should be down in a few minutes," He explained to them while he poured two mugs of tea, added three spoons full of sugar to one and took the other mug into his long, slender hands.

"But before she returns, there are a few points to be cleared. I assume that you feel certain… apprehensions concerning me and my work with Hermione," He smirked mockingly, but turned serious again in an instant. "And I´m willing to discuss these points. But not now, and not in her presence. You had better remember what she has been through during the last hours. Although there are things you don´t know about Hermione, remember that you are her friends and allies, and that she needs your support, not your judgment."

"Who are you to talk about her like that?" Ron demanded angrily.

"I am the one who has to pick up the pieces if you trample her in your righteousness," He snapped back, but immediately calmed down again, as soft steps on the stairs warned them of Hermione´s arrival, and they fell silent once more.

Hermione appeared, wearing a long-sleeved brown top and linen trousers. Her face was tight and worn, her posture stiff and alert, and her eyes darted from one man to the other.

Mutely, Snape offered her a seat in a high backed armchair and placed a blanket on her knees. She smiled thankfully and curled up in the chair, taking the mug her Potions professor offered her.

"Spice tea," She whispered, inhaling its perfumed scent. "Thank you, Severus."

"Since when are you calling him Severus´," Ron demanded angrily, but fell silent when Remus placed a warning hand on his shoulder.

"Ron, Harry. Remus. I can imagine how difficult and shocking this must be for you," Hermione began hesitatingly, finally meeting their gaze one by one. "But please, believe me that I didn´t keep this from you because I didn´t trust you. Severus himself found out only by accident, and I never intended to hurt you!"

Compassion filled Remus as he watched her, driving away confusion and sorrow until all he saw was a girl, no, a young woman, pleading for her friends to forgive her. Ron's eyes must have told her a different story, however, for she flinched when she met his gaze and turned hastily to Harry, whose expression seemed totally unreadable.

"I kept silent because… because you have already enough to bear, Harry. And I was ashamed of what I did, in a way. I wanted you to treat me like you had before, as if I were still the old Hermione, and not a Death Eater who…"

An echoing knock interrupted her. Quickly, Snape moved over to a mirror by the magic tapestry.

"It´s Albus and the others," He informed them, once more performing the strange ritual.

"What others?" Remus asked, but before Snape could answer, the carpet started to glow and three figures hastily stepped through. They could discern Dumbledore, second the familiar figure of Minerva McGonagall, and the third person…

"What is he doing here?" Ron yelled and pointed an accusing finger at Draco Malfoy, who had entered Snape´s chambers last.

And again, Remus felt the events crashing down on him like a huge wave. How could they treat this like an absolute secret, and then inform Lucius Malfoy´s son? Had they all gone completely mad?

Minerva examined the small group sitting around the table with a critically raised eyebrow, then smiled a greeting to Snape, and softly touched Hermione´s hand before settling down on a sofa.

"Good to know you´re back, my dear," She announced in her precise, crisp voice.

"Thank you, Professor," Hermione answered the smile.

Then, the young woman turned her head towards Draco, who had remained standing motionlessly in the middle of the room.

"It´s alright, Draco," She whispered. "They will find out anyway."

Draco´s slim frame relaxed visibly, and the usual arrogant sneer vanished from his face, to be replaced by an open and warm expression. After greeting Snape with a smile that was dazzling in its beauty and honesty, he strode over to her and critically looked her over from head to toe.

"How are you feeling, love," Draco asked with concern. Hermione raised her head towards him, white teeth beaming in her smile, and he bent down and softly kissed her on the forehead.

"Terrible," She answered lightly. "I´m in a mess."

"Nothing unusual, then," Draco joked and chose an armchair, on which he curled down in a position very similar to hers.

"Spice tea?" He asked. "Gods, I hate the stuff, Severus. Why can´t you favour coffee or some other decent drink? I had a letter from father tonight," He went on without a second´s pause. "He told me…"

Snape´s warning look stopped him, and for the first time he seemed to realize that the situation was different than usual.

"So that's the true Hermione, is it?" Ron broke through the silence bitterly, such disappointment in his voice that it hurt Remus to listen. "Best friend of the ferret and Snape, practically living in his quarters. You are probably honorary member of Slytherin by now. No wonder you have stopped spending time with Harry and me."

Despair darkened Hermione's eyes. "It's not that easy, Ron," She pleaded. "I had good reasons for doing this, and, as I said, Severus found out only by accident. Draco knew about it because I needed him to get to Lucius Malfoy, and…"

"What did you want with Lucius Malfoy?" Ron was shouting again and Hermione shrunk back in her armchair, her face very pale and her hands trembling slightly.

"She seduced him," Snape answered coolly. "To enter the Inner Circle, where she betrayed my position as a spy to gain Voldemort's trust. And you had better stop behaving like some whining drama queen, Mr Weasley. This is no adolescent tragedy, this is life. People are fighting and dying around you everyday, and Hermione is doing what she can to reduce the losses to a minimum."

Ron's mouth was working, but no sound escaped his trembling lips. Harry had turned away and hidden his face in the shadows. Only now did Remus notice that he hadn't said a word since Hermione had returned.

"I can accept that, Hermione," Ron had found his voice again, though it croaked and rasped like that of an old man. "I don't understand how you can do it, but I can accept it, somehow. But it still doesn't explain… this," His hand gesture took in Hermione, curled comfortably in Snape's armchair, sitting in his library as if it were her home.

"We all would have supported you – Harry and I, Remus, Professor McGonagall… But you chose Snape! We hate Snape! We always have! And you live with him, call him Severus and use his shower. This is perverse, Hermione!"

"But I needed help, Ron," Hermione cried out, desperate for him to understand. "I nearly died, and Severus was the only one to help me out of it! He gave me the strength I needed, and… and he became my friend," At the last words, her voice had died down to a whisper.

"Your friend," Ron snorted mockingly, showing how little he thought of that friendship, and Hermione flinched as if he had slapped her. "I saw the way he touched you, Hermione. He's not your friend, that old, ugly Death Eater! He´s so horny, I bet it´s turning him on every time he´s touching you. He´s probably wanting to fuck you as much as the Death Eaters!"

Hermione started to tremble.

"Stop it", Draco shouted angrily to silence Ron, "Don´t you know what Severus has done for her? Don´t you see the state she´s in?"

"I don't care what he's done for her," Ron shouted back, his face red and furious. "All I see are two filthy Slytherins and a Slytherin slut!"

The mug escaped Hermione's trembling hands. It hit the carpet and spilled its content, the liquid darkening the rich colours of the wool. All words died in them as they watched her body jerking and convulsing, writhing and suddenly collapsing, the armchair overturning. Her head would have hit the corner of the table if Snape hadn´t been faster. His hand shot out and he caught her head, softly cradling the base of her skull while he once more took her in his arms and settled her carefully against him on the carpet, so that her upper body leaned against his chest.

"You know the drill, Hermione," He urged her softly. "Breathe. Where does it come from?"

Sounds escaped her throat like the yelping of a hurt animal. She tried to turn her head towards him, but failed miserable, as she had last all control over her limbs.

"I´m sorry," She panted, even in her pain embarrassed of what they had to witness. "I´m just…"

"Hermione!" Snape snarled, fury radiating from his body like a storm. "Stop wasting your breath and concentrate, damn you! Where did the cramps start?"

She tried to speak, but she had neither strength nor air left as her body writhed and convulsed, a perverted mirror of the movements of lust. Weakly, she lifted her right hand and pointed at her stomach, wheezing and whimpering.

"It´s alright," Snape said calmingly. "I understand. Are you prepared?"

The nod was only visible because they had all awaited it, otherwise it would have been lost in the violence of the seizure.

"Concentrate," He announced again, and then, without lifting his head towards them. "And, before one of you decides to rush in again, what I´m going to do now is the only effective method against the Cruciatus´ after effects. I learned that the hard way."

_Cruciatus?_ Remus thought, once again shocked by what fate had decided to reveal to them tonight, but before he could ask or even understand Snape´s command, the man raised his hand and drove his fist with all his strength into Hermione´s body.

She screamed, short and broken, as her lungs didn´t hold enough air, but all the pain and despair of the world lay in this scream. Remus had to avert his head, and Harry and Ron were crying openly.

On Draco´s, Albus´ and Minerva´s face he found nothing but resignation, and a deep, old and hardened sorrow.

Remus couldn´t understand what Snape whispered into Hermione´s ears, but it seemed to soothe her and slowly, oh so slowly, the cramps subsided. After what seemed like an eternity to them all, she lay still.

"This is the second time you have caused her pain by disobeying my commands," Snape said bitterly. "I really hope that you won´t be able to prove your stupidity a third time tonight."

"And this was caused by Cruciatus?" Harry asked, trembling.

"Its after effects," Snape explained without once taking his eyes off Hermione. "They are what really makes the curse so nasty. The seizures increase and intensify with the time, until its victim is in a continual state of pain."

Draco suddenly shuddered and turned his head away. "I heard my father scream like that," He whispered, his face pale. "More than once."

Against the black of Snape´s robes, Hermione´s head moved, and her eyelids fluttered open.

"Stay like this for a moment, my dear. Take your time."

"I will," She promised, her voice that of an ancient woman. "I just didn´t expect it, Severus. Sorry."

"When did they start applying the curse, Hermione?" Snape asked, frowning.

She glanced at the old clock besides his desk.

"About four hours ago," She answered hoarsely.

"Then it´s too soon for a reaction," He thought aloud, and his face betrayed his deep concern. "How long this time?"

"Forty to fifty minutes," She croaked, "The Dark Lord punished Lucius for his overenthusiastic… use of my person, and forbid him to ever go so far again. When he retired, the Inner Circle decided I needed a "reminder" of my position. They took turns."

Minerva gasped in shock, and Remus´ widened eyes mirrored her sentiments.

"But that´s impossible," The Transfiguration teacher exclaimed. "No one could survive that! The curse drove the Longbottoms mad after only half an hour! She can´t have…"

"Enduring the curse can be trained as well as everything else," Snape interrupted her. "What will kill you your first time is not nearly as dangerous after a time of continued contact with Cruciatus. One develops a resistance. All Death Eaters do. Unfortunately, the disadvantages of Hermione´s birth …" He smiled down at her, some life returning into his voice. "Sometimes it pays to be a pureblood, Hermione."

"I´ll… try to remember that," She answered slowly, and to Remus disbelief he found that she was joking again. "Will certainly do better next time… Help me up, please…"

"No," Snape said, and there was no questioning his decision. "This has gone on far too long. You need to sleep and to heal. Everything else can wait till tomorrow. Am I not right, Headmaster?" He asked with a sharp look over to Dumbledore.

"Absolutely," The old wizard agreed. "Try to rest Miss Granger. I will answer the questions of your friends."

Getting the hint, Remus got up and led the group over to the magic gate, where they silently murmured their good byes and vanished. The last thing they saw before the glow transported them to Snape´s barren chambers were the two figures leaning against the back of an arm chair, Hermione resting in the arms of Snape, and he stroking her hair with the utmost care.

He didn´t look up to see them go.

And they were relieved that he didn´t.

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A/N: Revieeeeew! Next chapter will give you the reactions of both parties and some surprising discoveries on Harry's side...


	33. Catching the Clue

A/N: Sorry for the delay with this one, folks, but Christmas is always a busy time for me. And thank you for your reviews! (Those exclamation marks should express my happiness sufficiently!) 

Now to your questions: Yes, you still don't know about Hermione's reasons. I know that. But you will find out, and we're close now. Very close. Same with the romance!

As to Ron: I agree with you all that his ... social abilities (cough, cough) are somewhat underdeveloped, but he has a reason for his behaviour, and we will find about that soon, too. IN fact, we will find out exactly as soon as about Hermione's secret motivation (now was that a hint or not?).

Have fun with this one, and enjoy a blessed Christmas!

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**Catching the Clue**

After their unwanted guests had finally left his chambers, Severus didn´t move or talk for a long time. Neither did Hermione. They just lay there, she settled comfortably against his warm, softly moving chest, he with his back resting on the corner of the sofa, and let the whirling thoughts of their minds come to rest.

Before the unpleasant, albeit brief confrontation with Hermione's peers, Severus had been rather nervous about how Hermione would react. Her report had given him the chance to tell her about their unwanted visitors silently, in the private language of their minds, and to warn her about the listeners.

It had been too late in a way, she had already given away much more than he had wanted the Gryffindor idiots to know, but whenever she returned from the revels, or prepared for them, or when her emotions were running wild inside her, she would close her mind away, protect it behind steel walls of Occlumency.

She had shown no outer reaction to the news, but for a moment, her mental landscape had turned cold as ice and bitingly hard, an intellectual equivalent to what he had dubbed her Ice Queen role.

_You know they would find out eventually,_ He had told her silently, and felt her nod inside his mind. _You should use the chance to get things straightened out with them. And if they don't accept it, we can still obliviate them_.

He had sent her a malicious smirk, just to show how much he would enjoy obliviating Harry bloody Potter, and she had responded with a silent chuckle.

_I need a shower first._ She decided finally. _And I don't want them to know about our mind-speech, Severus, so you will have to repeat that explanation out loud._

And so he had staged yet another show with her, hoping silently that the shock would keep the infernal Weasley quiet for once. He had even tried to talk civilly to them, for goodness sake. And still the brat had gone and blew it.

Quite spectacularly, actually.

And now she was lying in his arms, in pain, totally exhausted, and no doubt the words of that imbecile were ghosting through her mind.

Severus had never considered himself to be a peaceful man, but the amount of rage that flooded through his veins surprised even him. Ronald Weasley had just joined his Top Three list of hated men, running directly below Lucius Malfoy and the Dark Lord himself.

"Well, that went well," Hermione broke the silence tiredly. "I wonder why we haven't done it before?"

"It had to happen, sooner or later," Severus reminded her, quite proud that he could keep the insulting of her Gryffindor friends at bay. "We couldn't have gone through with your plan without them knowing. And perhaps it will motivate Potter to use his brain now and then, and stay out of the worst danger."

He sighed. "Though I must admit Mr Weasley is just as hopelessly idiotic as I have always said."

He groaned inwardly when he felt her stiffen in his arms. _She really needed to be reminded of that, Severus. Brilliantly done._

"I´m so sorry, Severus", Hermione said, her voice cracking with pain and exhaustion, "Ron´s behaviour was inexcusable. Here I am, defending them all the way, and the first chance they prove that you´ve been right all along. I could have hit him for that…nonsense! You don´t let it take to you, do you?"

"Take the opinion of Mr Weasley seriously? I would prefer extensive brain damage, Hermione," Severus answered dryly, but he couldn't help remember how the brat's words had cut through his defences and wounded right were it hurt most.

"And haven't I told you not to worry about other people's feelings so much? I can't believe you're wasting a thought on this nonsense, when all you should do right now is rest, and sleep!"

"Yes, I know," She answered quietly. "And normally I agree. But this is completely different."

"Would you care to enlighten me why?" He inquired with an exaggerated sigh. Their disagreement about what he called the first principle of spying had often led to wild discussions, and one or two times to open quarrel.

"Because it´s you", she answered simply, and all his arguments melted away in a wave of astonishment.

"You´re not just "people". You see", she explained, her head still resting trustingly on his chest. "When I sat there tonight, and all the people I care most about in Hogwarts were assembled around me, I suddenly realized that it wasn´t Ron or Harry or Dumbledore that matter most to me. It is you. And I couldn´t bear if your "involvement" with me would cause you any pain!"

Half a year ago, he would have scorned her for these words, a month ago he would have brushed them away. Now, he carefully lowered his head and placed a soft kiss on her forehead.

"It is not you who hurt me, nor our "involvement", as you call it," He answered seriously, knowing that she would detect a lie or euphemism immediately. "It is Voldemort, and the prejudices of our society. And you are already doing against it what you can. So don't worry about me."

Silence fell between them again, the comfortable silence of two people who knew each other well.

"Do you think we'll ever be free," Hermione then asked suddenly, and there was such longing in her voice that it pained Severus. "Without a war raging around us, without all those secrets and the constant fear? Do you think we will ever be able to walk in the light again and shed all those masks, and roles, and pretences?"

"I don't know, Hermione," His answer was barely audible, a whisper not more than a breeze. "I don't know."

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Remus had expected Ron to break into another string of insults the moment Severus' office door closed behind them, but obviously, the display of Hermione's condition had silenced even him, for he didn't say a word until they reached the stairs that led from the dungeon.

There, Draco, who had walked by McGonagall's side, suddenly slowed his steps and turned towards Albus.

"It would be probably better for me to leave, Headmaster," He announced with a short glance towards the Gryffindor boys. "This night doesn't need further… disturbances."

Albus nodded shortly, but a warm smile grazed his lips as he bid the Slytherin good bye.

"Good night, Professors," Draco greeted, and suddenly, his face smoothed completely, shedding all traces of emotion and returning to the cold, sneering mask Remus had come to associate with Malfoy. "Potter, Weasley."

And he turned around on his heel and retraced their way into the dungeons.

_How could I ever underestimate that boy so dearly?_ Remus asked himself as he watched the slim figure vanish in the darkness.

Like all the teachers, he had kept his eyes open for possible Order recruits or those in any position to further their fight. He had held secret meetings with Gryffindors, Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs.

_But I have never even wasted a glance towards Slytherin!_

And once again, he realized Hermione's brilliance with a mute feeling of shock.

While they had been blinded by their old hatred, she had forged an alliance with the blond incarnation of Slytherin House, and he had proven to be more loyal towards his Gryffindor friend than any Hufflepuff could ever hope.

And it seemed now that those two students had provided the major information inflow of the last months, giving the Order his one chance to regain his footing against the Death Eaters and a still not very cooperative Ministry. Remus had wondered when exactly his world had become so ridiculously confusing.

He heard Ron whisper something at his side. Though he couldn't make out the words, the tone was more than clear – some aggressive comment about Malfoy. But Harry just shook his head, still not saying a word, and Ron's shoulders slumped in defeat, as if this last denial of even a small revenge had undone him.

Silently, Remus, Minerva, Harry and Ron followed Dumbledore back to his office, where this nightmare of an evening had begun.

Dumbledore served them all with hot chocolate, which he seemed to consider as some kind of all-purpose-medicine, but Remus could see that neither of them touched their cup. They seemed lost in their despair.

"How long have they been doing this, Albus?" He finally asked.

"Hermione has been our spy for more than five months. The… arrangement you witnessed tonight developed in early November, out of dire necessity, and has worked excellently ever since."

Ron snorted. "Some fine arrangement that is," He said bitterly.

And finally, the explosion Remus had been waiting for since Ron had uttered his first expletive erupted. With a vengeance.

"Mr Weasley," Minerva's cold, disapproving voice cut through the office, and everyone flinched slightly in reflex. Even the Headmaster. "Before tonight, I have been thoroughly proud of my House and its Seventh Years. But you," Her voice vibrated with anger now, and Remus tried very much to become invisible. He was a Gryffindor, too, after all. "Have shamed me tonight! And not only me, but your House and Prefect status as well! I have never seen such immature, _idiotic_ behaviour from a boy your age, and the fact that it was your friend you wronged so deeply makes the whole thing even more preposterous!"

Ron opened his mouth then, as if to protest, but her eyes narrowed in response and all he managed was a quiet, choking sound as if his windpipe had somehow suddenly collapsed into itself.

"No, Mr Weasley, I will not hear a single word on this matter tonight! If this situation wasn't so blatantly outside of school regulations, your House wouldn't see the positive side of the House Point marker for the rest of the year! I am deeply, deeply disappointed in you!"

With that, she rose and made to the office door. "I am due with my rounds, Headmaster," She announced, still in that crisp, cold tone. "And if I find a single Gryffindor out of bounds tonight, he _will_ suffer dearly!"

The precise closing of the door sounded like thunder in their shocked silence.

"Minerva rather likes Miss Granger, and is a bit protective towards her," Albus explained with a smile, but it was tired and still showing his years.

_Won't you tell them that she's absolutely right?_ Remus wondered at the Headmaster, but then understanding crossed his mind. _But you're too much the politician, aren't you? You're more interested in them coming to terms with these news than criticizing their behaviour._

"Now, as I promised, you have the chance to ask whatever you wish to know. But I have to warn you that your discovery will make it necessary to put you under a certain spell, something we have come to call our "Remembernothing" within the Inner Circle. All members in possession of sensitive information have already been treated with this triggered Obliviate, and I can assure you that it is not dangerous."

_Protecting Miss Granger your very own way, aren't you, Albus_, Remus thought as he watched both boys nod their assent.

"Wonderful," Dumbledore smiled, suddenly the twinkling old gentleman again, as if all problems of the evening had been solved. "Your questions, then!"

But though Remus had been bursting with questions just a moment ago, he couldn't find a single one of them now. In fact, he didn't want to. He didn't want to even think about this, let alone consider it real.

_Asking questions would mean to accept this whole mess_, He thought angrily. _And I'm not nearly ready to do so, yet!_

"I can´t believe this", He suddenly cried out, still one last rebellion against the unavoidable. "I mean, Hermione! She´s still a child! Good with her books, yes, but I never would have thought her capable of something like that! Ron, perhaps, or you, Harry, but it is completely out of character for Hermione to do something so reckless!"

"No, it is not."

To their surprise, it was Harry who had disagreed with Remus, his voice thoughtful and older than Remus had ever heard it. He had not spoken since they had left Severus quarters, nor had he been very talkative in the presence of Hermione.

But now that Remus looked at him in surprise, he realized that Harry had been busy with other things.

While the others had tried to come to terms with their discoveries, Harry had obviously done some thinking. And grown up.

There were lines of worry in his face that he had not had before, or perhaps he had just hidden them too well for anybody to notice, and his eyes were of that dark green, mossy colour that Remus had only once seen – the day Harry had sought him out, back in third year, and asked to be taught the Patronus charm. It were eyes that had accepted the unavoidable, as Remus hadn't been able to just a few moments ago, eyes that suddenly saw the world in a new light. Eyes older than their years.

"Now that I come to think of it," Harry continued in his new, thoughtful voice. "It is perfectly logical. After all, Hermione always _was_ the most radical of us, but always in such a secretive, discrete way that no one would find out. Me and Ron, we would make a lot of noise and drama, but it was Hermione who´d come up with the twists, and the tricks, and the solutions."

Albus looked surprised, and Remus rather agreed with his scepticism. From what he remembered about the Golden Trio's escapades, Harry had always been the one leading them into the most dangerous stunts and situations.

"What are you talking about, mate?" Ron asked angrily. "Hermione was perfectly harmless! I never…

"But think for a moment, Ron! Remember the past six years! Once Hermione had overcome her fear of breaking rules, she was the fiercest of us three! Who solved Snape's puzzle in first year when I didn't even understand the poem, and lied to our Professors about how we met that Troll? Who decided that we should disguise ourselves as Slytherins to slip into their Common Room in second year? Who brewed the potion and even stole the ingredients from Snape´s private storage? Hermione!"

He flashed a short, apologetic smile at his confused teachers, "You probably never found out about that, but I guess it´s statue-barred by now, isn´t it? It was Hermione who discovered the nature of the monster and how it was able to wander through the school. She even thought of a mirror to peer around the edges.

"And in third year, Hermione had no scruples to confront Trelawney. She discovered Remus as a werewolf ages before any of us, and she kept silent about it! She punched Malfoy in the face and managed to keep her timeturner secret for an entire year! We never even suspected her to hide something from us. She came up with the plan of rescuing Sirius and Buckbeak, and she pulled off a double illegal action without a second's hesitation."

He could see the others watching him in astonishment, probably having never even realized the amount of things that had been going on behind their backs, but he didn´t care now, he had to go on. All the little pieces seemed to fall into place while he went through their past, and he just wondered why he had never seen it come, why he had still believed his Hermione to be a normal, albeit brilliant, girl.

"Fourth year? She didn´t mind breaking the rules to help me one bit. She managed to keep up a relationship with Krum and our friendship at the same time, though we were competitors. And remember how she found out about Rita Skeeter?" He turned around to Ron, who was staring at him with a dumbfounded expression.

"That she was an unregistered animagus? Skeeter could turn herself into a beetle and would creep in rooms that way. Hermione caught her and kept her in a glass for weeks. Then she blackmailed her to never publish an article without her permission again," He explained to his teachers. Even Albus was gaping openly at the boy now, his pretence of knowing everything for once forgotten. Remus, however, felt the ominous wave crashing over him again. It was a sensation he was becoming quite used to in the course of this evening.

"This blackmailing she used in fifth class to publish the article in the Quibbler, our only real victory against the Ministry that year. She was the one who warned me about my "People" thing, about Sirius' problems with growing up, about Umbridge's real intentions - the only one who told me the truth about anything going on, frankly. And she developed curses and security hexes for the DA, not to mention that it was her idea in the first place. That fake galleon that I could change and everyone would find the new date of training on his own galleon? She based it on the Dark Mark. She had no problem copying and using the darkest magic ever for her own use. Nor had she any qualms leading Umbridge into the Forbidden Forest, knowing all the time that Gawp was there and that Umbridge´s attitude would make her the most hated enemy of magical creatures."

"She developed curses and hexes in her fifth year?" Remus asked faintly, and Harry nodded absently, seemingly not knowing how astounding that fact was to Remus. But then, being around Hermione for seven years probably destroyed your concept of normal learning processes and student abilities.

"And remember sixth year? She used Kearcher to lead Bellatrix and her husband into our trap and risked his life that way. Hermione, who had been campaigning for elf rights for more than two years, tricked an elf into betraying his mistress. She never even flinched when Bellatrix killed him. Obviously, she befriended Draco without us ever noticing anything. And from what you told us, Headmaster, she must have planned her spying long before, finding the right connections and learning the skills that would enable her to stay alive. And _we_ thought Professor McGonagall had apprenticed her."

Silence filled the room again as Harry lowered his head in silent acceptance of the facts.

Desperately, Remus tried to recall what he had known and believed about the past six years. Yes, there had been something about Hermione solving Severus' riddle, but he had been too busy with the Dark Lord situated in Quirell's head to think about a first year that had bested a Potions Master's logical puzzle.

Second and third year – yes, she had found out about the basilisk and his own, hidden darkness, but he had always concentrated on the bookish aspect of that, the fact that Hermione was a good researcher and an avid reader. What her discovery, and, in his case, her silence had actually meant had never fully reached his mind. And blackmail? Fake galleons? Curses and hexes? The sacrifice of Kreacher? What had gone on behind his back? And, from the stunned look on his face, behind the Headmatser's back as well?

"Hermione did all that?" He asked when he trusted his voice again. "You and Ron always made her sound as if she was studying all the time!"

"That's what we thought – it was the way we saw her," Harry answered quietly. "But now I wonder what else we never noticed... what else she didn't dare tell us."

"That's what I mean!" Ron cut in, his anger rising to the surface again and all his shock from Harry's little puzzle game obviously forgotten. "We are her friends! One tells friends about everything! One does not keep them in the Dark, or lie to them! What kind of friend is she, trusting that git and the ferret more than us?"

"If she didn't trust us in this matter, Ron," Harry snarled, and his voice was suddenly cold. "Then we must have given her a reason. How often have we belittled her? How often have you made fun of her because she was studying too much? How often has she pleaded with us to open our eyes and see what was going on around us?" His voice died down, until it was quiet as the rustling of dead leaves. "How often have we ignored her warnings? I wonder how much suffering we caused her."

"We wouldn't have caused her anything if she had been open with us! I refuse to feel bad because Hermione has turned into a sneaky Slytherin!" Ron shouted, and for a moment Remus was frightened by the expression in Harry's face.

But instead of the reaction both he and Albus had expected, a noisy Gryffindor quarrel, Harry simply turned around towards the Headmaster, completely ignoring his friend.

"When will we be able to have that spell put on us, Headmaster?" He asked calmly. "I do not want to take any risks with Hermione's safety."

"Well spoken, my boy," Albus beamed at him like a benevolent grandfather, while Ron huffed angrily in his corner and crossed his arms in a sullen gesture. "Tomorrow morning, before breakfast, perhaps? I will ask Moody to assist me in the procedure. Severus doesn't seem to be a wise option, at the moment," He added with a glance towards Ron.

Harry nodded in agreement. "His presence might complicate things," He said dryly.

"I won't let that greasy git touch me," Ron protested, his voice still unnaturally loud in the silence of the Headmaster's office. "And I can't believe you all simply accept what Snape is doing with her. He must have somehow confounded her, or is blackmailing her, or…"

"Ron!" This time it was Remus who had interrupted Ron's tirade. "I advise you to stop and think before you go on like that, or I will be forced to repeat Minerva's little speech. You are of age and should behave so!"

"Fine," Ron yelled, his red face contrasting sharply with the lighter shade of his hair. "Pretend that everything is fine and let Hermione play Slytherin! I will not accept this and behave as if she wasn't living with an old, horny Death Eater!"

And before someone could react, Ron had stormed out of the office, slamming the door shut behind him with a resounding bang.

Harry sighed, and sent small smiles to the older men. "I had better follow him to make sure that he doesn't storm the dungeons," He said. "I hope he will calm down overnight. Headmaster, Remus…"

"Have a good night, Harry," Dumbledore called after him. "And don't worry, everything will turn out just fine."

But Harry Potter would not have a good night, and the dawn would find a young man sitting on the window sill of his common room, watching the rising sun with old eyes as if the whole world had changed overnight, and would never be the same again.

And perhaps it had.

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Revieeeeeeew! Next chapter features a visit to Tintagel, some rather difficult talks, and a wild confrontation between Harry and Draco in the hallways of Hogwarts! Revieeeeeew!


	34. New Eyes

A/N: Terribly sorry about the delay, people, but life's a bitch. 

I'm not completely happy with this chapter, but I wanted to give you something at least. I only managed to update this because it was nearly finished already before stress took over.

Thank you all for your reviews, and your patience! You keep me going...

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**New Eyes**

"Malfoy," A cold voice snarled behind him, and Draco stopped in his tracks, dread seizing his body in a grip of steel.

He had known, the moment he had stepped through that tapestry and saw the nice little assembly of Gryffindors awaiting him, that everything would change. He had felt comfortable "being himself" with Hermione, though he was still trying to find out what exactly that "being himself" meant. He had even started to relax around Severus and Professor McGonagall.

But the werewolf, and his personal bane of existence Potter, along with his sidekick? No chance.

And it seemed that Potter would prove him right now, in the middle of a crowd, just as Weasley had proven him right the night before, because just as he tried to walk away, pretending industriously that nothing had happened, the cold voice repeated his name.

"Malfoy," Potter called again, his anger seeping into the walls around him. "Don't pretend you didn't hear me!"

This wasn't happening! Potter couldn't be so daft! Confronting him openly about yesterday evening, and in the entrance hall, during breakfast time no less!

_Gods help me, someone stop him!_ He prayed desperately as he turned around slowly, the Malfoy trademark sneer fixed on his face. But no one was there to prevent the catastrophe from happening, neither McGonagall, Lupin, nor the Headmaster himself.

Only a group of very curious Ravenclaws, and a few scattered Slytherins that had stopped their progress towards the dungeons to watch.

Shit.

"Potter," Draco drawled in answer, desperately seeking for a way to evade what would follow. "What do you want?"

"Stop staring at me," Potter demanded angrily, and Draco's jaw nearly dropped in astonishment. What the hell did that mean? "One would think you and your Death Eater friends had never seen a Gryffindor before!" Potter continued, and now there was some strange, mischievous glinting in his eyes that Draco had never seen before. "For the last fifteen minutes you have been staring at me like the warty Baron is staring at his mirror! In love, Malfoy?"

That said, Potter turned around and vanished up the stairs, leaving Draco rooted to his place, probably looking to all the world like a furious Slytherin just bested by a Gryffindor.

But the only thing furious inside Draco were the wheels of his mind, turning faster than ever before as he tried to make sense of Potter's strange behaviour. He hadn't confronted him about Hermione, and his accusation was outright ridiculous. In fact, Draco had made sure to completely avoid the Gryffindor table this morning, not wanting to prompt another outburst from the weasel.

Potter had tried to tell him something, he realized suddenly, this whole thing had been staged to hand over information… the warty Baron… for fifteen minutes!

In less then a second, his mask of cold diffidence was back in place, and he smirked at the curious students around him. "Always sad he would go mad, didn't I?" He sneered, and saw some of them nod in agreement.

"Go without me, I had a wonderful idea for a new hex," He explained to the Slytherins that were waiting for him to catch on. "I'm just going to the Library to check some things."

Slowly, as if he didn't have a care in the world, he climbed the steps to the second floor. The moment he found himself alone, however, he doubled his tempo and turned left, then right again, then left, in a quick succession of winding corridors, half-hidden doors and tapestries until he was sure that no one could follow him.

Only then did he make his way to the statue of the Warty Baron that had, from the look of it, recently acquired a Gryffindor leaning casually against its pedestal.

"Potter," He greeted the other boy again, but this time with open curiosity. "What exactly does this whole cloak-and-dagger nonsense mean?"

But Potter just shrugged. "I'm sorry if it was overdone," He answered with a lopsided grin. "I'm knew to that whole subtlety-business."

This time, Draco couldn't suppress his astonished stare. This was Potter, for goodness sake! Talking to him in good humour and joking about himself! Had the world come to an end?

"So why did you want to meet me here?" He inquired after a moment of strained silence. "I guess this is about Hermione and yesterday?"

"In a way," Potter answered, his face suddenly drawn and nervous. He didn't look as if he'd gotten much sleep last night. "I wanted to tell you that you and Hermione are safe from both me and Ron. We underwent that Obliviate spell of the Order this morning, and I asked for you to be included into the protected information. I suspect the Headmaster added a _Fidelius_, too. I thought that might calm you."

"Do I look like I needed calming, Potter," Darco snapped, his mind a whirling chaos. Why was Potter doing this? This must be a scheme of some sort, a plan he had developed with his sidekick to make Draco pay… His Slytherin mind started to calculate and analyze every possible consequence of this meeting, but Potter's next words froze him in his tracks.

"I also thought you looked like a Death Eater in training, and I was obviously dead wrong," Potter answered quietly.

"Shows only that my acting skills are up to standard," Draco answered after a moment and swore he could hear a soft curse from the Gryffindor, and a murmured "Is everybody in this bloody castle pretending, dammit?" But he wasn't sure.

He supposed he should be thankful for the obvious acceptance Potter was showing towards him, for his will to reconsider. It was probably more than he could expect from the weasel.

But he was still so angry when he thought about last night and her hurting, writhing body. Never had anything in his life meant so much to him as Hermione and this strange, growing partnership with Severus, and Weasley had attacked both with nearly Slytherin viciousness. And Potter had just listened to it.

"Where's your bodyguard, Potter? Running around and insulting women?" He asked harshly, and had the satisfaction to see Potter flinch violently.

"He's not talking to me," He finally sighed in answer. "Obviously, he has decided that you are all evil, and as I refuse to share his view point, he has grouped me with the enemies. Nothing to be done when Ron is like that."

"Surprising, that! I never noticed before," Draco drawled, leaning back against the wall and folding his arms in front of his chest. "So was this all you wanted to tell me, Potter?"

Potter sighed again. "Draco…" He whispered, like a silent cry for help. When the Slytherin didn't react or soften his posture, he continued in a tone so tired and sorrowful, that even Draco couldn't keep his eyes from widening slightly.

"Draco, the way she was, yesterday… all the pain… has she been like that often? Have… Have Ron and I caused something like that?"

There was fear in his words, and a tiny, flickering hope that the Slytherin would absolve him. Draco smirked inwardly. Potter should have known better.

"Your harebrained stunts very nearly killed her, more than once," Draco answered without an ounce of compassion. But if Potter had wanted some sensitive hinting, he wouldn't have come to him. "That night you spent out at the Quidditch pitch, for instance. I visited her under pretence the next day, and though she put up a brave front in class, she could barely move without screaming in pain. The Death Eaters, especially my father, have done things to her…"

Potter's eyes had clouded, and something, perhaps the expression of utter defeat and loneliness in his face, made Draco stop. Hermione wouldn't thank him for this. And after all, he and Potter were on one side. Strange as that sounded.

"It was her decision, Potter," He said roughly, and Potter raised his head in silent surprise. "I pleaded with her to tell you what the consequences of your actions were, but she wanted to keep you ignorant. Not only for your sake, but mainly for hers. She wouldn't tell you this in a million years, but she's terribly ashamed of what she's done. I've seen her return from meetings with my fathers, and she always looked like a deadened, stony thing. With you, she could forget part of what she had become, and I think that this was even more important to her than avoiding pain."

Still, Potter didn't seem convinced, and despite his own inclination, Draco found himself consoling this hopeless fool of a Gryffindor.

"She deceived even Snape," He told him, the tone of his voice softening somewhat. "If I hadn't blown the whole thing, believing that she needed medical health, he probably wouldn't have found out. Even though, she fooled him for nearly three months. The man who could dissect shadows with a knife! And a Slytherin no less! So don't blame yourself if you didn't notice anything, Potter. You are a Gryffindor after all, and that means you're blind by definition."

There. A consolation wrapped in a confession hidden in an insult. At least he had been up to Slytherin standards with this answer, though its content was blatantly out of character.

What wasn't up to his standards, or rather totally against any of them, was Potter's reaction. Any Slytherin would have sneered, and drawled, and wrapped his thank you in as many insults as Draco had his consolations.

Potter, idiot Gryffindor that he was, just stepped forward silently, grasped the Slytherin's hand – too fast for Draco to retreat to safety – and pressed it hard.

"You've been her friend where I failed to see her needs, Draco," He whispered in that sentimental tone that normally induced the acute need to choke, retch and joke in Draco. "I would like to thank you for that. And I would also like to apologize for believing you a Death Eater. I should know better than anybody else that we can't be judged by our parents."

"What do you want to say, Potter," Draco asked, mistrust kidnapping his mind again.

"That I'm glad your on our side, Draco," Potter answered with a conviction so deep and open that it left no place for mistrust. "I'm glad you're on Hermione's side. I trust you to keep her safe."

"And this whole "turning Slytherin" thing doesn't bother you?" Draco asked with barely concealed disbelief.

Potter just shrugged. "We all combine more than one personality trait," He answered. "I admit that Ron is as Gryffindor as one can get, which is his greatest strength and weakness at the same time, but there is no other Gryffindor I know that doesn't have character traits of one of the other Houses. The Ravenclaws have been pissed off ever since second year that Hermione didn't join their ranks, and I have seen enough of her over the years to recognize her more Slytherin aspects. Besides," He shrugged again, and his grin turned outright malicious. "The Sorting Hat very nearly put me into Slytherin. Did you know that? I only turned out Gryffindor because I pleaded with it."

Draco stared at him with wide eyes. He had always wondered what Hermione liked about Potter, except for the fact that he was the Bloody Boy Who Lived, of course, but this little encounter had given him more than a glimpse of the true Potter, and more than a few hours' thinking material. Perhaps he had misjudged as badly as Potter had.

But that wasn't a thing you told a Gryffindor. Never. So instead he smirked and sneered, noticing well enough that he couldn't fool Potter at all.

"The Heavens be thanked that you were so persuasive, Potter," He said, and the Gryffindor agreed most heartily.

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Hermione had expected to lie awake most of the night, once Severus had convinced her to retire and insisted on carrying her up the stairs. But surprisingly enough, she had fallen asleep the moment her head had hit the pillow.

She suspected the cocoa Severus had fixed her to contain more than just milk and chocolate, but she had to admit that a night of dreamless sleep had done her good.

"Hurry up with your breakfast," Severus told her as she descended to the library the next morning. "I intend to take you out of here at least for one day."

"Out of here," She repeated and settled down at the table, ignoring the pain her stiff and sore limbs screamed at her. "But we don't have time to simply leave, there is so much to do…"

"Ingenious as I am," Severus smirked at her superiorly. "I have found a way to combine getting out of this rotten castle and doing a very important part of our work. Ever been to Tintagel in winter?"

She hadn't, and it turned out that she had missed quite a lot.

The surprises of their preparations alone were enough to make the trip worthwhile. Severus had proposed to use a complex triple-layer of glamours, impossible to see through for even the most adept wizards and witches, and to dress as muggles.

When she had seen his disguise, however, she couldn't help but snort with laughter. Severus' dark golden hair was short and slightly curly, his eyes a chocolate brown, and he was wearing a burgundy turtleneck along with trousers the colour of earth. Hermione however had opted for what her muggle neighbours called the "gothic style": black hair, eyes of so dark a brown that it turned to black in the shadow, and a black, long skirt and top that left her legs and arms free to move and convenient hiding places for her knives.

Through some strange twist of fate, the two had changed colours completely, though both had carefully tuned down their features to nondescript normalcy. Severus looked a bit like her uncle Luke this way, and she might have been the infamous Potions Master's daughter.

"Charming," Was all Severus said when he had fully taken in her experience, but his smile contained a good deal of pride as he took her arm and led her towards the spelled tapestry.

Their walk to the edge of Hogwart's anti-apparition wards was uneventful, probably due to the invisibility cloak they were hiding under.

"These things really are brilliant," She told Severus in a whisper after they had passed a group of first years. "I always hated it when Harry used his cloak, it felt too much like an encouragement for his dangerous nightly adventures, but when you know what you're doing…"

Her voice faded away, and Severus knew that she was thinking about her friends again, wondering how the talk in Dumbledore's office had gone.

"I contacted Albus this morning," He told her as they left the castle meadows and entered the outskirts of the forest. "Mr Potter appeared very reasonable yesterday. He even attempted a little lecture about your rather interesting past… activities," He smiled dryly. "And to think that I always blamed the disappearance of my boomslang skin on him. He wouldn't have known what to look for."

Hermione actually blushed to that. "I'm sorry, Severus," She whispered. "But we needed that Polyjuice – or at least I thought so at the time."

"Actually, I'm quite proud that you managed the Polyjuice in your second year," He remarked while he cleared them a path through the shrubbery. "You must have had an inspiring teacher."

Hermione smiled. "That I did." She agreed quietly.

"How did Ron react, then?" She asked when they had reached the apparition point.

Severus just met her eyes and shook his head.

"You don't want to know that, dear," He told her and apparated away.

Tintagel was… spectacular. To put it mildly. When she had seen the place first she had been in her second year of primary school, and though she had not even dreamed about being a witch or attending Hogwarts, when she had seen the rough formations of cliffs, the way stone, grass and water merged together into one living, breathing thing, she had been sure that there was such a thing as magic in the world.

And when she had seen the hole the people called "Merlin's cave", hidden near the stony beach where wave after blue wave crashed against the brown-grey shore, she had believed it all.

For a moment.

Then they had met a bunch of raucous Dutch tourists and had entered the local stores, where she could buy magical swords, Merlin's wands and seeing crystals by the dozen, and her logical mind had snapped into action, telling her to forget the romanticism and consider the whole thing nothing but a gigantic economic trap for tourists.

But she hadn't looked well enough, or rather, not deep enough.

For Tintagel was, as it had always been, divided into the above and the below.

The muggles believed Tintagel to be the legendary Camelot of King Arthur and his knights of the round table, though the above had been nothing more than the home of a minor Lord with notions of grandeur and a clerk with a knack for forging historical documents.

The above belonged to the humans, the muggles, the blinded who believed to find magic in one of the cheap crystals for sale in the village. The below was another story, though.

For the caves under those green, ragged stones, the hidden Tintagel no muggle would ever know… it was a place of wonder and mystery even today.

Merlin had lived here, in fact, for many years, though not in the small cave they attributed to him. Merlin was no ascetic hermit, thank you very much. He had resided in a hall of stone and gold and jewels, building an empire among the creatures of the deep.

Today, his hall was a museum, and wizards were visiting it from all over the world. In many ways, they were as bad as the muggle tourists, but at least they kept quiet and tried to dress inconspicuously on the above, and as Tintagel was visited by hordes of semi-mad people everyday, even the brightly dressed incognito wizards escaped in the crowd.

Unlike most of the wizards and witches, who used the secure apparition point provided by the local wizard tourist office, Hermione and Severus used a small cluster of trees and bushes, half a mile away from Tintagel, to pop into existence.

"What are you planning to do?" Hermione asked as they trekked through the green, rocky country towards their destination.

"Only repeat some of your tests and acquaint myself with the territory. Once you have introduced your plan to the Death Eaters, it will be impossible for any known member of the Order to visit this place. The Dark Lord will have it watched day and night. If I want to plan an attack, I have to know every inch of rock and stone."

He looked up to the sky and smiled, his lightly tanned features softening in the glow of the winter sun. "That and we were both in dire need of a day in the sunshine. Another lesson painfully learned: You have to get away from everything now and then, to remember what it is you are protecting, and that it is worth it."

Somehow, Hermione knew that he had developed this special lesson for her and her alone, that it had never been part of his spy routine in all those years, but she was thankful nonetheless.

"I don't need Tintagel for that, though," She answered quietly, her eyes following the line of the rolling hills around them. "An evening in your chambers is enough, Severus."

His eyes darted towards her at that, and there was a new intensity in his gaze that she couldn't interpret. She averted her face, pretending to concentrate on the countryside. She hadn't felt so insecure in his presence for a long time. _Ron_, she thought unhappily, _You have no idea what you did to me!_

Suddenly, she felt his arm around her shoulder, and looked up into his smiling face.

"Look," He told her, pointing at something in the distance. "There it is."

And as she followed the direction of his arm, feeling the warmth he gave her and seeing Tintagel shining in the rays of silver white light, she knew it would be all right. Somehow.

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Never had Hermione feared the walk up to the Great Hall as much as she did on this Saturday. Even the Dark Lord's throne room seemed an alluring alternative to her as she entered and crossed over to Gryffindor table, and it took all her discipline not to turn on her heel and vanish in the dark bowels of the dungeons, where she was safe.

The time they had spent away from Hogwarts, researching, mapping the terrain, talking and laughing about old stories, had given her strength, but not nearly enough to go through with this. Why could she not simply wait for her friends in a dark corner and obliviate them both?

But on she went, though she trembled at the thought of meeting Ron, his hurtful accusations once more ringing in her ears.

Severus had assured her that Albus had added a _Fidelius_ component to the spell he had implanted into her friends' brains this very morning. They would only be able to speak about her spying with someone who knew about it already.

But spells or explanations had never kept Ron from following a once set course, however stupid or blatantly wrong it might be. One Ron had judged a situation, it was nearly impossible to change his mind. It took a dragon, like in fourth year, or a resurrected Scabbers to have him admit a mistake, and even then he was lousy at it.

However, when she reached the Gryffindor table no Ron was visible among the boys and girls bowing over their plates, and she couldn't suppress a slight sigh of relief. No public confrontation with him then. Which left only Harry.

Said young man had watched her searching look and obviously interpreted it correctly.

"He has gone down to the kitchen for his meals," He told her quietly and padded the empty space on the bench beside him.

Silently, Hermione nodded and sat down gingerly, trying to control her reflexes that screamed at her to get away from him, that he was an insecure factor she best keep at a distance.

_This is my friend_, she told her reflexes sternly and helped herself to some stew, _If he can bear sitting next to me after the things he found out about me last night, I can bear his presence, too._

Harry watched her quietly as she started to eat, his own meal nearly untouched.

"That spell the Order uses, that was designed by you, wasn't it?" He finally asked and she very nearly choked on her stew. Hastily, she looked up to the Head Table were the scowling face of Severus watched over her.

_I'm all right_, she sent, _he just surprised me. It goes quite well, actually._

"How do you know?" She then asked, turning back to Harry, her voice as breathless and strained as the hollow feeling in her chest. "Did Dumbledore tell you?"

Harry smiled to that, and suddenly she noticed how grown up he appeared today, how serious.

"I've known you for seven years, Hermione," He told her with slight reprimand, but amusement was ghosting through his words. "We have studied together, and I watched you develop more than one spell. Don't you think I'd recognize your handwriting by now? It wasn't all yours, especially the potions part felt foreign… Snape, I guess?"

Silently, not trusting her voice, Hermione nodded. "Did Ron…?" she whispered, but Harry shook his head in answer.

"Ron only sees what he wants to," He answered, keeping his voice down. "As did I – until recently."

As she looked into his eyes, red-rimmed and hooded with tiredness, haunted by something she couldn't quite name, Hermione realized how terrible it must have been for him, sitting in Severus' chambers and being informed by others, people outside of their threesome-circle, about what she had become. What she had done and been done to.

How terrible it must have been to realize that the Golden Trio was broken and had been so for a long time. To realize that one of his best friends had lied to him. Repeatedly. And had trusted their enemies instead.

"I'm so sorry, Harry," She whispered, and this time, the trembling of her lips was for real. "I didn't want you to find out this way. I don't know, I think I waited for the right time, but I should have told you…"

"I'm sorry as well, Hermione," Harry interrupted her, lightly touching her shoulder, then turning away from her and back to his stew. "I have done a lot of thinking last night, and I finally realized how much I have lost my way. How I have ignored my duties in favour of playing a child once more. And once I understood it was my behaviour that forced you into this, I…"

"No, Harry, never believe that!" Now it was her time to interrupt him, and her voice spoke of how important her words were. "Whatever you may think, I didn't do this for you. I had reasons of my own, reasons I can't tell you yet, but I did not decide to fulfil the duty you avoided. This is not your fault. And if you caused me suffering, it was only because I was too much a coward to inform you fully."

She stopped when Ginny walked by, smiled a greeting and then concentrated on her stew once more. It had gotten cold, but she didn't mind. She wasn't interested in eating at the moment, anyway.

"I'm glad you said so," He answered after a moment of silence. "For the thought drove me mad. And I won't demand that you tell me everything. But…"

He paused, and Hermione's breath caught painfully in her throat. Here it was, the big "but". Would he tell her that he couldn't live with a Death Eater spy as a friend?

"There was a time, Hermione," He whispered, carefully that no one would hear his words. "When we used to tell us things. Not everything, I realized that yesterday. You never told us everything and we wouldn't have understood if you had tried. But we used to help each other whenever one of us lost his way. We would warn each other, or support each other, and whenever we thought we couldn't go on, we would turn to each other for strength."

He took a deep breath. Clearly, it was hard for him to say these things, and Hermione had the suspicion that he had spent most of last night building this speech, but she dismissed the thought as unimportant in a heartbeat.

"I'm not asking for absolute openness," He continued, his voice taking on a pleading tone. "And I realize that there are things Snape knows I would never even understand. You need him, and Draco, and I won't try to take them from you. All I want to ask is if we… could start anew?"

Letting all pretence of eating fall, he turned around to her fully and, carefully, took her right hand. "I would like to get to know you, Hermione Granger," He said softly, his green eyes searching her face. "I hope we will be friends one day."

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A/N: Really hope you liked this! Next chapter will feature an irate Minister of Magic who has come to arrest Hermione for being a Death Eater, and Hermione's… unique way of dealing with him. Stay tuned and I will try to update in about a week!

And review! Please!


	35. Hot Fudge

**A/N: **Right, I'm glad you all like the "new" Harry. He will play a bigger role from now on, I believe. 

Someone mentioned his wish for Draco-Harry slash in this. What do you think about it? I hadn't planned on putting those two into a relationship, and it wouldn't feature majorly, but if you all want it, I could think of something… Tell me!

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**Hot Fudge**

"I have decided to join the Order, Hermione," Harry said the following afternoon as they sat together in her Head Girl room. "It is time for me to do something, and this way, I will at least know what is going on."

They had desperately wanted to spend time together, Hermione out of the relief that Harry was accepting her so easily and Harry out of the wish to know this "new" Hermione better.

As their talk would naturally contain a rather large amount of topics labelled "confidential", and Hermione wasn't very keen on meeting Ron, they had chosen her room over the Great Hall or the Common Room, and Harry had asked Dobby for some tea.

What they had gotten was rich assortment of biscuits, cakes and desserts of all flavour and colours that they were doing there best to diminish.

"It seems a good idea," Hermione answered, drinking her tea in slow sips. "But you should be sure _why_ you do this. As I told you before, my decisions were not made because of you, and guilt shouldn't drive you into something you don't really want."

Instead of an answer, Harry smiled and carefully refilled her cup.

"I have always known this would happen," He finally said in the thoughtful voice he now sported. "And there was a time, after fourth year, that I couldn't await it. But then, during fifth year, I somehow lost my way, and Sirius' death propelled me right over the edge. If I have finally decided not to waste my time anymore, you should be glad about it and not question my motives."

Sitting besides him in front of the fireplace, her hands curled around her cup of tea, Hermione mirrored his smile.

"It is good to have you back, Harry," She told him quietly, "I have missed you over the last months."

Before he could answer, the rattling of a window interrupted him. Hermione stood quickly and walked over to where a brown owl was waiting on her window sill, let her enter, and retrieved the letter.

She read it quickly, then shook her head in frustration.

"Damn," She whispered, carrying the letter over to the fireplace and handed it to Harry. "Something bad must have happened."

"Miss Granger," The letter read in Snape's precise handwriting. "Please report to the Headmaster's office immediately. There is an urgent matter do discuss. S. Snape."

"To me it sounds normal enough," Harry protested. "Probably some spy thing."

Hermione just shook her head. "He calls me Miss Granger and uses the key word "urgent". And the abbreviation of his surname tells me I must be careful. But the "please" – it can't be the worst or he would have used a "do" instead," She explained to a dumbfounded Harry.

"Let me see the crinkles," She raised the parchment in front of the flames and studied intently what had seemed a perfectly ordinary letter to Harry.

Harry leaned forward to examine the letter as well, but flinched back when Hermione snarled in anger. "It's Fudge, the brainless bastard! He has found out about my position with Voldemort and has come to arrest me."

"But Dumbledore wouldn't let him…" Harry cried out in shock.

"Dumbledore is totally helpless in such a case," Hermione interrupted him tiredly, but suddenly she smirked, reminding Harry very much of a certain snarky Potions Master. "But don't worry, Harry, I have planned for this. Poor Fudge won't know what hit him."

She rose from her place by the fireside and handed the letter over to Harry again.

"Burn that," She ordered, smoothing her robes and skirt and applying a combing charm to her hair. Then she noticed that Harry hadn't moved, fixedly staring at the letter in his hand and trying to make out Fudge's name in the perfectly harmless message.

Seeing his confusion, Hermione grinned and wagged her finger at him. "I always told you to read _Hogwarts – A History_," She told him. "Don't worry, everything will be alright. Burn that letter."

As she headed out of her portray-hole, she could hear his frustrated voice.

"What the hell has that book got to do with all this," He asked the world in general, and Hermione grinned in delight. Perhaps she had finally found a trick that would make him read it.

0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0

Eight people were waiting for Hermione inside Dumbledore´s office: The Headmaster himself, Professor McGonagall, Lupin and Snape. And Fudge, with three Aurors sitting besides him, focussing on her and her alone the moment she entered.

She paled when she saw the Minister and the aurors, like a school girl that had been prepared for a mild reprimand and was instead confronted with a furious teacher. But she showed no hesitation or fear as she nodded her greetings to each professor. She took a bit longer with Severus, and Remus, who was watching her with worry, thought that she probably searched for reassurance in his eyes.

What he couldn´t see was the silent dialogue between the two spies that was the real reason for her lingering.

_Do you require help_, his black eyes asked her calmly.

_Everything is under control so far. Anything specific yet?_

_No. Just general menaces_.

_Anti-obliviate the aurors, please_.

He nodded, only barely perceptible, and she moved over to the only chair that was left for her to sit on, situated between Remus and McGonagall.

_They probably think I need protection_, she thought, and heard a distant snort, the echo of Severus´ dry, sarcastic laughter.

"Miss Granger, I presume," Fudge inquired with a boastful voice.

Hermione just nodded meekly, and Remus was more than surprised. Never had he seen her so shy and bashful, not even in an official's presence.

Fudge, too, looked surprised, and the aurors frowned in confusion. Obviously, they had expected someone very different from this friendly, subdued student. Hermione didn't look as if she would dare to venture out after curfew, who could imagine her to be a Death Eater?

But Fudge seemed to place more trust in his sources than in his own eyes, for he cleared his throat and commenced an obviously rehearsed speech.

"Before we begin, please hand over your wand to Mr Jones, Miss Granger," He demanded, nodding at the auror to his left.

Remus could hear Minerva draw a sharp breath, and see Albus' eyes darken in anger. Never was a witch or wizard asked to give up her wand without an official arrest or openly announced charges. To demand so in the Headmaster's office was an open insult, and Remus expected Hermione to plunge into a lengthy quotation from some legal tome or history text.

Instead, she complied silently, and even dropped into a little curtsey in front of the Minister.

This time, he could distinctly hear a gasp from Minerva, and a choking sound from Severus. Turning around to the Potions Master however, he saw nothing but his usual blank face with the small line between the eyebrows.

"Miss Hermione Jane Granger," Fudge continued now, even more pompous than before. "You have been accused by reliable sources of joining the followers of Lord Voldemort, the so-called Death Eaters, and entering their Inner Circle."

Though Remus wouldn't have believed it possible, Hermione turned even paler at that, and her lower lip began to tremble with barely repressed emotions. She looked pitiable, and not threatening in the least.

"Death Eater?" She squealed, sounding very much like a house elf. "Who could have told you something like that? I would never have anything to do with Death Eaters!"

"You see, Cornelius," Dumbledore threw in as he had done before. "Miss Granger is a muggleborn student, and best friend to Harry Potter! She would never side with Voldemort! You sources must be wrong!"

"I'm afraid I need proof for that, Dumbledore," Fudge hollered. "Better proof than the word of a suspected Death Eater!"

He gestured towards one auror and the man grabbed Hermione's left arm, unbuttoned her blouse and tried to push the sleeve upwards.

Hermione squeaked again like a frightened mouse and tried to evade the auror's hands, Minerva shot up and protested in her crisp and commanding voice, but it was all too late. For the auror's hands had already revealed Hermione's secret.

The Dark Mark, disfiguring her forearm like a hideous tattoo.

The moment it had become visible, the aurors' wands had whipped out and were instantly pointed at the still trembling school girl. Fudge had retreated behind the safety of his chair.

"Cornelius, please," Albus admonished, raising a calming hand. "Everything will be explained. Miss Granger may carry the Dark Mark, but she is, in fact, a spy for our side."

"Then why have I never received a report from her?" Fudge asked snidely, his voice angry and cold. "Do you mean she is spying for your precious Order of the Phoenix? Do you expect me to believe such a cock and bull story? A muggleborn girl, and you let her spy for you? Do you want to insult my intelligence?"

Remus believed that he could hear a whispered "not possible" from his left, where Severus was sitting, but he was too concentrated on the scene before him to turn around and meet his colleague's eyes.

"No, I will not allow you to let another miscreant slip through my fingers, Dumbledore. The girl will be arrested and placed under close guard in Azkaban, until we have decided on a time for her hearing and…"

"Impossible, Cornelius!" Albus interrupted angrily. "The girl is a student at Hogwarts and therefore underlies my jurisdiction first! You cannot take her away like this!"

"Oh, but I can, Dumbledore," Fudge disagreed, and the triumph turned his face into an ugly grimace. "Miss Granger is of age and perfectly able to make her own decisions. Therefore, she will be treated like any adult and that means Azkaban for her!"

Hermione cleared her throat, and suddenly, all eyes were on her again.

"May I not at least say something about this before my fate is decided?" She asked in a small, school girl´s voice.

"Make it short", Fudge commanded, face and posture not hiding how little he thought of her.

"Very well", she nodded, and it seemed to Remus that her whole being changed colour that very instance. She suddenly appeared taller and her eyes were glittering dangerously. Colour returned to her face and banished all traces of fear or anxiety. She rose to her feet, and her presence immediately filled the room, as if her authority was the highest among them.

"If I have to make it short, let it be this, Fudge: You will not bother me any further."

Fudge laughed, but there was such quiet reassurance in her voice, such majesty, that his laugh faltered and died away. No one else had laughed. They were all busy watching the girl that had transformed into a queen.

Obviously, Fudge noticed that his audience had turned towards another actor, for he decided on another approach.

"You are in no position to command me, girl", He mocked condescendingly.

"Am I not?" Hermione smiled, her eyes dark and bottomless, and it was the most frightening smile Remus had ever seen. He suddenly understood why Fudge had brought three aurors, and found himself seriously wondering whether they would be enough against her.

"Before you do something foolish, Fudge, let me warn you that I am not unprepared. I have expected you to take this course for some time, and there are three little parcels, deposited at different solicitors, that are waiting for exactly the action you are about to take, namely, my arrest."

"We have no time for games like these, girl," He answered, doing his best to sound totally unimpressed. "You will be brought to Azkaban immediately. Everything else can be discussed during your hearing!"

But Hermione made a better show of being unimpressed than the Minister could ever hope for.

"Now, don´t be hasty, Fudge, don´t you want to know what gifts I prepared for you?" She smiled again and lifted her hand, to count the three parcels on her finger.

"One," she said, touching her right index finger as if this was some basic exercise. "Is a small collection of photos and documents which prove your long lasting relationship to a Miss Cynthia Redgroove, living in Diagon Alley. The photos I am quite proud of, actually, I managed to capture you in… a variety of positions. Needless to say that this package is addressed to your wife, Fudge."

Fudge started violently and turned as red as a tomato.

"This is impertinent," He growled. "I expect you to stop this foolishness, Albus. She is your student, and you should control her better than this!"

"Unfortunately, Cornelius," Dumbledore replied, spreading his hands in a gesture of helplessness. "Miss Granger is of age and perfectly able to make her own decisions, as you so eloquently pointed out a few minutes ago. My hands are bound, I'm afraid."

He lowered his head in a gesture of polite acknowledgment towards Hermione, and she mirrored the gesture with calm elegance.

"Number two," she continued, as if she hadn´t noticed Fudge's reaction. "Is a series of letters addressed to all members of the Wizengamot that prove your involvement in massive irregularities concerning the auror training programme. I found out that you have been manipulating the tests for years, keeping out pupils and protégées of Dumbledore and substituting them by favourites of yours, even though those favourites were far less competent. Need I go into detail, Fudge? We both know that proof of this affair is enough to lose you the title of Minister. And I have found more than enough proof."

The temperature in the office dropped abruptly. The three aurors that had watched Hermione warily until her last statement were now eyeing Fudge openly, mistrust evident in their face.

"This is nonsense," Fudge cried, but Remus could hear one of the aurors whisper something about rumours he had heard from "his pal in the educational squad."

"And should this not be enough – all my teachers will tell you that I am a very careful and meticulous person, Fudge – parcel number three is addressed to a Mr Lucius Malfoy," Fudge's intake of breath sounded like an explosion in the absolute silence of the office. "Who happens to be a personal friend of mine. This letter informs him that you have decided to take rash and determined action against the Malfoy clan and have found out about several secret houses and estates of his. It also contains information about your daily routine, your private life, and your three children."

Dread seized Remus. She wouldn't do something like that, would she? He would have waved the thought away a week ago, but after the discoveries of three nights ago, he was painfully aware of how little he knew in fact about Hermione Granger. But to sentence Fudge's family to death like that? They were talking about innocent children!

Judging from the chaos of emotions that darted over Fudge's face, it seemed that he was asking himself the very same questions. Unfortunately, all he knew about Hermione was her status as friend to the Boy Who Lived, who had openly expressed his hatred for Fudge. And her status as Death Eater of the Inner Circle. Both rather worrisome points, the Minister's face clearly stated.

"Now then, Minister", Hermione continued, her tone all sugar and honey now, as if she hadn't just uttered not only one, but three massive threats to the life and career of said Minister. "What do you think of my preparations? Have I promised too much?"

Fudge opened his mouth, but no sound left it. The smile still on her face, baring her teeth in a subtly threatening gesture, Hermione waited patiently for his answer, as if she hadn't a care in the world.

Perhaps it was her patience that did it, for it certainly wrecked havoc on Remus' nerves. Even Snape had never managed to reduce a person as self-assured as Fudge to a stammering idiot in less than ten minutes.

Whatever his reason, Fudge collapsed into himself like an oversized balloon.

"Your… preparations were… excellent, Miss Granger," He admitted through clenched teeth. "The Ministry will delete all accusations concerning your… position, and I will personally make sure that all information concerning it will be ignored in the future. I hope this satisfies you!"

"Of course it does, Minister," Hermione replied with another brilliant smile and a twinkle of her eyes identical to that of the Headmaster. Fudge obviously noticed the imitation and sputtered in indignation.

"All I will need now is my wand – thank you very much, Mr Jones, and then I will leave you all to your business," She nodded to each of her teachers in turn, had the audacity to curtsey again in Fudge's direction, and moved towards the office door.

"Oh, and Minister", she suddenly stopped, her hand already yon the door knob, "I wouldn´t have come to you with this request, but since we luckily met here…"

This time, the choking sound originated from the Minister himself, who had reddened even more. He opened his mouth, probably to rant and rave at her again, and Hermione immediately abandoned all pretence.

This time, her voice was colder than ice, and hard enough to cut glass. "You will completely legalize the Order of the Phoenix, grant the same authorities and rights to it that the aurors already possess, and confirm their right to establish new headquarters in Hogwarts. 24 hours time should suffice for you to pass these decisions. If I find your enthusiasm concerning these points lacking, I will concentrate on the distribution of said little packages."

When no reaction followed, she resumed her old place in front of Fudge's chair and leaned forward slightly, perhaps to meet his eyes.

"Do not mistake this for a request, Minister," She told him quietly, but in a tone that left no room for doubt. "This is an order you will follow, if you want your career, life and family intact."

"I will not do this!" It seemed that Fudge had finally come to life, and that some small active part of his brain had realized who this person in front of him was.

"Threaten me with whatever you will, I will not legalize that bunch of vigilantes! It is my duty as Minister of Magic to…"

"I would be pleased if I thought your refusal the consequence of some sense of honour or duty you might have," Hermione cut him short, her voice like silk, but turning sharp like steel in an instance. "But I know better, Minister. In fact, you are the most spineless, pathetic creature I have ever met. Your only interest is in your own public image. You haven't deserved respect or mercy, Fudge. And you will certainly not receive them from me."

"I will not be blackmailed by a mere girl, someone who wasn´t even born in our community!" Fudge now shouted, and in another world, Remus would have laughed at the aurors' horrified faces, who were shocked not by the comment, but by the person it was directed at. Obviously, they had realized their Minister's mistake before he had.

But he very soon would.

Slowly, Hermione glided towards him, her movements reminding all of them of a great cat, ready for the jump. Slowly, sensually, she trailed the back of Fudge's armchair with her index finger, her hand coming to rest on the nervous man's shoulder, soft as a landing butterfly.

"Oh, I see. You probably don´t believe that I´m capable of this? Do you think I´m bluffing, Minister? I´m sorry to disappoint you. All this is the thruth, in fact, I´ve done far more than you know, Fudge. I´ve been in your house, one night, while you slept, in your very bedroom."

Again, her revelation was met by shocked silence.

"I remember that room well," She continued dreamily, her hand still resting on Fudge's shoulder, though he tried to shrink away from it. "It has light blue walls and your bed is richly decorated. Dark blue canopies, and wonderful woodcarvings. Probably chosen by your wife? By your bedside is a small rosewood chest in which you keep your collection of newspaper articles on your person. And you don´t file them chronologically, Minister, I couldn´t help noticing, but according to the "pleasantness" of their content. Do you still believe I´m bluffing?"

Fudge's face had lost all colour, and had he looked ridiculous before, he now very much resembled Death himself. His eyes darted over to the aurors, who refused to meet them and concentrated on Hermione instead, a strange look of fascination on their faces.

"It can´t be!" Fudge protested weakly, though it sounded more like a hopeless pleading to them. "No one can enter that house without a dozen aurors noticing him! I…"

"I have been a Death Eater in the Inner Circle for nearly a year, Fudge", Hermione interrupted him again, her voice dangerously soft, like the purring of some huge cat, ready to attack, "I, a mudblood, have risen to the highest rank among the Death Eaters. Do you really believe there is anything I can´t or wouldn´t do?"

The terror-stricken face that looked up to her as a mouse would to a cat made abundantly clear that, by now, Fudge believed her capable of anything and everything, and, smiling sweetly once again, Hermione drove the point home.

"Do you want to risk your children's life on it?" She asked friendly, touching his shoulder again in a motherly gesture and chuckling softly when he flinched away violently from her.

"No. I didn't think so, Minister. You are, after all, not an evil man," She answered her own question, still in that horribly friendly tone. "I suggest you and your men had better leave then, after all, you have a lot of paperwork to clear this afternoon, haven't you? I expect Professor Dumbledore will hear from you in the course of the morning?"

Fudge's throat worked as Hermione pulled him out of his chair and led him over to the door like one would a stubborn child, but no sound escaped his wide open mouth, and all he managed before the office door clicked shut behind him and the aurors was a wobbly, very insecure nod.

Silence reigned the room as Hermione returned to the group assembled round the desk, took over the chair the Minister had vacated and calmly conjured herself a cup of tea. She took a sip of the hot beverage and sighed contentedly, ignoring her teachers that were staring at her mutely.

Remus found that he couldn't avert his eyes from her, petrified in a wild mixture of shock and fascination. So that was the real Hermione, the spy, the Death Eater. The one that had gained Severus' trust and admiration. The one that had succeeded in a task no one else since Severus Snape had.

He quite honestly didn't know what to do - worship her for her brilliance, or run away kicking and screaming because she had been more frightening than even Severus had ever managed.

Then, a soft chuckle roused them from their shock and when Remus turned around, he saw said Potions Master´s lips twitching gently.

"That was rather dramatic, Hermione", he said, amusement dancing over his face.

"Hope so", she replied pleasantly, and suddenly transformed back into the ordinary girl that had entered this room not an hour again. Her shoulders slumped slightly, her back lost its rigid straightness, and her face seemed to regain the softness of youth. It was as if someone had suddenly drawn a veil over the sun, disappointing and deeply relieving him at the same time.

"Fudge is always for the dramatic," Hermione continued, rolling her shoulder to drive the tension from them. "All weak characters are. Did you give them the anti-obliviate potion?"

"Poured it into their tea", he nodded, "That was a mean twist, by the way."

"But effective", she shrugged, "And we wasted far too much time on him."

"Why did you give them an anti-obliviate Potion?" Remus asked, his mind whirling madly but finding no link between what had just transpired and this new topic. Even Dumbledore looked confused

Snape snorted. "Gryffindors, all of you". He saw Hermione grin and noticed that he had unconsciously sorted her into another house with his statement.

"There were three aurors in this room today, and all three heard Hermione accuse the Minister of meddling in their affairs. Though she may not prove it, this will be through the auror´s ranks in a few day´s time, and no auror will ever trust Fudge again. That´s why he will use a memory charm on them the moment they have left Hogwarts. I slipped them a potion into their teas so that they can remember the accusation _and _the fact that the Minister tried to manipulate their minds. I believe we can expect the auror Headquarters to contact us quietly over the next days."

"Slytherins", Remus commented, with more than a hint of awe in her face, "But how did you know you should use that Potion on them?"

"We have ways of… communicating", Snape answered evasively, and, with a look towards Hermione, added silently, _That will make them think_.

_Didn´t we give them enough to think already_, she asked back and grinned at him again.

_Do you reckon it was MacNair?_ He continued their silent interlude, accompanying the thought with a package of his own speculations.

_It was MacNair_, She answered quietly. _Why do you think I looked into his eyes so often? The letter was anonymous, but I recognized his handwriting perfectly._

_We must get him out of the way then, as quickly as possibly_. He decided, and she sent her affirmation before ending the eye contact.

"Good planning concerning the Order," Snape said aloud, and Remus nodded in agreement.

"I hope you didn't believe my idea unrespectful, Headmaster," Hermione said worriedly, turning towards the Headmaster. "But we didn't have time to discuss this beforehand, and I thought it best to achieve as many advantages as possible in the situation."

"It was a brilliant thought, and brilliantly executed," The Headmaster told her smiling, though he was still missing something of his usual benevolence. Clearly, the whole thing had unsettled him more than he wanted to show. "Though I wonder if those bluffs weren't a bit risky?"

"But the parcels were no bluffs," Hermione answered good humouredly. "I used part of my summer holidays to prepare them. There are similar parcels waiting for a number of… other persons and occasions."

Something in her eyes told the Headmaster and everyone in the room that they didn't in fact want to ask about those parcels and their content. But everyone in the room felt suddenly very glad to be on her side.

"My leverage on Rita Skeeter for example was sufficient already," She continued thoughtfully. "But it wasn't hard to find what I wanted about the others. Not at all," She shook her head in concerned disapproval. "It is quite shocking how sloppy some people are with their secrets!"

No one wished to continue that specific thread of conversation. Only Severus chuckled in appreciation, and Remus felt very certain that _he_ hadn't been sloppy about his secrets. Oh no, not their Spymaster!

Finally, the Headmaster cleared his throat. "I certainly admire your handling of this situation, Miss Granger," He said, his voice slightly less self-assured than Remus was used from him. "But wasn't entering his house a bit too dangerous just for the effect?"

"Gods, I am not stupid, Headmaster," Hermione replied with honest shock in her voice. "I would never enter a guarded house for such little reason."

Again, Snape chuckled in that irritating way of his and sent an almost loving look in Hermione's direction.

"Then how did you know about these things?" Minerva asked impatiently. Like Remus, she hated it when things were out of her intellectual grasp. "You must have hit the nail, or he wouldn't have been so frightened."

"Percy Weasley told me about his sorting system," Hermione explained calmly. "He called it a brilliant approach to filing, I think."

"And the way his bedroom is decorated?" Remus inquired weakly, not sure if he really wanted to know the answer.

Slowly, Hermione grinned. It was a sly, mischievous grin, and she suddenly reminded the werewolf of his old friends, long gone, in their glorious prankster days.

"I read the article in _Witch weekly_," She replied, all innocence. "I _am_ a girl after all, you know?"

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Revieeeewwww! Do you like „Hermione in action"? Do you want more scenes like this one? Tell me!

Next chapter will have Harry and Hermione admitted to the Order, with some surprising consequences, and Ron still sulking. A storm is building, people…


	36. New Paths

A/N: I won't even try to apologize this new delay, dearest readers. I do know what you have to suffer, and I hate the slow progress I'm making probably more than you do, but there are things in this world that simply are out of my control – like computers and work loads… 

On a lighter note however, I'm glad to inform you that** I have created forum**s both for this story and my other story „Had I known". There you can find information, discuss aspects of this story with me or other readers, and, with a bit of luck, find hints about things to come and exclusive previews.

I created the forum because you all deserve replies to your questions or comments, although I am not able to answer to every review. Feel free to leave any comment you like, and be sure that I will participate in discussions and answer questions as long as they don't betray my plot.

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**New Paths**

Days turned to weeks as Severus settled into his role as the Order's Spymaster. He had never been prone to the meetings of the Inner Circle, nor had he ever found out more about Albus' sources than whispers and rumours. Now, while he extended his reach on every available information and full access to the Order's network, he quite frankly wondered how they could have survived that long.

Albus might be the most powerful and brilliant wizard of this and the last century, but his organisational skills were next to nonexistent, and his idea of proper documentation was connected all too closely with his near perfect memory. Writing things down, he seemed to think, was for other people.

So they spent hours in his newly acquired office, Severus asking questions and Albus answering them in his unique, roundabout way. He designed maps, diagrams and emergency protocols, tried to bring order to the chaos of Dumbledore's correspondence and sifted through the heaps of documents that filled trunk after trunk.

Much was to be done, and it didn't exclusively concern the spying and information business. Most of the member's concentration centred on the practical aspect of their work – collecting information, gaining new allies, following Death Eater activities and keeping the ministry at bay. Perhaps it took a Potions Master to teach them that "Gather as much as you can and then mix it wildly together" wasn't a method to organise resistance. Dividing the crucial from the unimportant, combining facts so that patterns might emerge and bringing all this into a form that allowed other Order members to evaluate it for their own work – all these steps so basic for scientific research, or research of any kind, had never occurred to most of them.

Even if some were aware of the shortcomings of their methods, they lacked the time or will to change them. As things stood, nobody protested when Snape took a look at what they had or hadn't achieved over the last months, exploded, and set to work.

Order meetings needed to be restructured and more efficient ways of communication had to be established, and while the Order's new quarters in Hogwarts made many things easier, they added the stress of decorating, planning and introducing an acceptable system of wards, passwords and security systems.

Some of these days, when he sat hunched over documents so long that his shoulders ached, it felt as if he hadn't enough time to breathe. Even his time with Hermione was cut short to fighting practice and strategy meetings as she was trying to teach the more than willing Harry Potter a basic knowledge of politics, Order work and the arts of deception. But he couldn't have enlisted her to help, anyway, while her role remained a secret even among the Inner Circle of the Order, and he couldn't have explained her presence in their Headquarters when even Harry Potter was waiting for his official introduction to the Order of the Phoenix.

Hermione.

He preferred not to think too closely about her these days. Outwardly, nothing had changed between them, but it was as if the insults of Ronald Weasley, flung at them in the heat of the moment, had destroyed something too tender to be named.

Perhaps it had been innocence.

Before, he had never questioned their close contact, both bodily and in the connection of their minds. She had been a girl in need of help first, a victim to unnameable cruelty. When she had turned into his partner, he had accepted her as a brilliant mind and able body, as sexless to him as Albus or Minerva.

And then, they had become friends. Family. Something so close that his search for a fitting description had been in vain. Something that surpassed every intimacy he had ever shared with another person by far, even the shorter or longer relationships he had shared with women over the years.

Every day with her had revealed something more about her, and, in turn, about himself, for he found feelings and thoughts returning that he had thought lost and dead years ago. Feelings Hermione evoked in him. Care. Tenderness. The wish to protect. Love.

And instead of remaining at a safe distance, he had plunged into it head over.

He had never even thought about their casual way of touching, of embracing or sharing their favourite couch during a quiet evening. How easily those endearments he had always scorned slipped across his lips with her. How barren and cold his chambers seemed without her.

How harmonious their bodies felt when they fought, like a graceful dance between equal partners.

But now, as if Weasley's words had unleashed some hidden part of his mind, he remembered the feeling of her hair as he had brushed and braided it, or as he would stroke it when she was in distress. He remembered the sweet scent of her breath and the clean smell of her sweat that would wash over him when they sparred. Her well defined body, so close to his that he could feel its heat.

The silky feeling of her skin when his hands had glided up her thighs to remove the daggers. Her dazzling smile, unexpected and overwhelming, that turned her into a beauty all of a sudden.

He was all too aware of her possible presence in the next room whenever he lay in the darkness, waiting for sleep that would elude him for hours, all too aware of her body when they fought, or talked, and his physical reaction to it.

And he cursed his own weakness.

This was wrong, so wrong that he shouldn't even be thinking along these paths.

Not because she was half his age or a student – such thoughts didn't even occur to him as he tried to exorcise her from his mind. She was no child, no student, and to him she seemed older, more mature, than many women his age would ever be.

But she had been hurt so badly, so repeatedly, that male desire had to be nothing but a threat to her.

He remembered how she had flinched from every touch when they had entered their partnership, her body nothing but a stranger, a tool to be used to her advantage. It had taken them months to establish this level of trust, months for her to feel secure with him, to believe that no hidden meaning lay behind his touch, and even considering her in this… way… seemed like betrayal to him.

She would hate him if she found out that he was just another – how had Weasley so succinctly put it? – horny old Death Eater, lusting after her body while she tried to keep her sanity intact.

And even if that part of her hadn't been destroyed irrevocably, who was he to believe he could attract a beautiful young woman like her, a woman that… No. He didn't allow himself those thoughts. Not even in the safety of the night, hidden away from all eyes in his bedroom.

So he buried himself among tons of parchment, busying his mind and body until he barely had the strength to crawl into his bed and concentrating all his thoughts on keeping his feelings from her, hiding his forbidden thoughts behind thick mental shields and forcing his straying eyes away from her body.

Silently praying that she wouldn't notice anything amiss.

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February had begun in a shower of rain and snow, drenching the ground in mud and turning the Great Hall's ceiling to a stormy grey.

Hermione didn't notice. Nor did she join the sighs and complaints of those who felt trapped in the castle, with little to do except schoolwork, and less to look forward to during these bleak and barren post-Christmas days.

For she was busier than she had ever been in her life, and when she crawled into her bed after midnight, asleep as soon as her head touched the pillow, she often wondered where she took this energy from, enough strength and motivation to carry her through days that seemed endless.

There was Harry, for once. He had stuck to his decision about joining the Order, and it had been received enthusiastically by both Dumbledore and McGonagall. But his first happiness about having finally found the right thing to do evaporated all too soon, and the first, casual talks with Dumbledore had left him confused and frustrated. His knowledge about tactics, politics and the structure of wizarding society in general, he had to realize, were virtually nonexistent.

What did he know about the workings of the Wizengamot or the Constitution? About the rights of the aurors or the Unspeakables? Even wizards' etiquette and the lineages of the great pureblood families were a great unknown to him. Finally he understood why Hermione had spent the last six years of her life studying incessantly, trying to understand this brave new world they had been catapulted into.

And it was to her that he turned for help.

She provided reading material, history and etiquette lessons, and told him everything about the Order – well, not everything, if she was honest, but definitely everything he had to know. But it were the simple things that drove her mad. How to teach him, for example, that he couldn't read his new found sources of knowledge in public? How to explain to him that the new air of determination he wore was a bad idea? That he shouldn't display too much tenderness and care towards her while other eyes could see them?

She had observed and studied human interaction as long as she could think, and only now, as she saw Harry struggling to maintain an acceptable façade in public did she realize how easy acting came to her, how much of a second nature lying and pretending had become to her. She had been playing a role long before she had turned into "Hermione the spy", and it seemed near impossible to her to teach what she was doing automatically.

"We do not only want to hide things from possible spies, we also want to project certain impressions," She explained the umpteenth time while sitting with Harry in her Head Girl's room. "Your public distance from Ron is a good thing, but we don't want you to look self confident or content. Insecure and nervous, those are the key words. I will tell Voldemort that I got closer to you, and that I'm reducing your hopes for victory. You must mirror that impression, or it won't work. Brood, withdraw, pick your fingernails, refuse to look others into the eyes…"

"I'm trying." Harry protested, his face an open book of emotions to her. "But it doesn't come naturally to me, and the moment I do not concentrate fully on those things, the mask slips. I don't know how to…"

She couldn't suppress a sigh of frustration. "And I don't know how to teach you," She admitted quietly. "I was never instructed in these things myself, and I don't know who… except… That _could_ be a solution…"

Suddenly, her eyes lightened and colour rose to her cheeks. She hastily scribbled a short message on some dog-eared parchment and sent it off with the owl she had bought over the summer.

"Let's go," She then announced. "He will be waiting for us in the dungeons, and we shouldn't let him wait too long."

She didn't answer any of his questions on their way down, safely hidden under Harry's invisibility cloak, which he carried with him everywhere these days. Harry had a sinking feeling in his stomach and the dreadful forbearing that this unnamed him would turn out to be Snape. But when they finally shrugged the cloak off and rounded a corner, they were greeted by a shock of white-blond hair and aristocratic features, smoothed into a mask of arrogance.

"Granger. Potter. Two kittens lost in a snake's lair," He greeted them coldly. "Be careful that you find your way out again."

"Malfoy," Hermione hissed aggressively and brushed by him.

Totally confused, but wise enough by now to silently copy her behaviour, Harry followed her, not sparing a glance towards Malfoy. He could now see that Hermione was performing some sort of spell, hidden from view by her robes. They rounded another corner and heard nothing behind them but the clicking of Malfoy's boots and his quiet comments about "mudblood and scarhead searching for a place to snog".

Only when they had reached an old wooden door that seemed strangely out of place with the gothic grandeur of the dungeons did she turn around to the Slytherin.

"All's clear," She announced and hugged him quickly. "Thank you for coming, Draco."

"My pleasure," He answered and gave Harry one of his trademark sneers. When it lacked the usual contempt and hatred, Harry realized with something of a shock, it looked surprisingly cool.

Fortunately, his thoughts were diverted from this worrying realization when Hermione turned back to the old door and placed her palms on it. Whispering something incomprehensible, she lowered one hand to the knob and turned it. The door swung open without a sound.

"Come in," She told the waiting boys and extended her arm in an inviting gesture.

"Where are we, Hermione?" Harry asked with mounting frustration. While the old Hermione had been all too glad to inform her friends in extension about any connected or unconnected topic, the new one had obviously developed a taste for secrecy and dramatic effects.

_No doubt because of the company she's been keeping_, Harry thought and remembered Snape's billowing robes and Draco's taste for flourishing gestures.

As it was, she only answered his question with a smile and a short "You'll see", and quickly ascended a winding staircase that turned out quite longer and more tiring than Harry cared for.

But what he saw when they had finally reached the top of the stairs made him forget all his exhaustion.

"A gym," He breathed, unknowingly mirroring Hermione's surprise after her first entrance.

"Indeed," She answered, smiling again. "Severus' private one. So don't touch anything and keep away from the cupboards. There are some nasty surprises in there."

Deciding to ignore the question of why the hell _Snape_ needed a private gym for the moment, Harry took a deep breath to repeat his questions once more, but Draco beat him to it.

"Impressive," He commented with the nonchalance of someone who had definitely possessed his very own private gym for most of his life. "But why are we here. What's the problem you mentioned in your letter?"

Hermione just raised an outstretched hand towards Harry.

"His face," She answered dryly. "I can't bring him to stop betraying himself."

Harry could see how it itched Draco to simply agree that Harry's face had been, indeed, a problem for quite a number of years, but then the blond visibly restrained himself. "What exactly do you mean," He neutrally asked instead.

"This," Hermione answered. "Take a close look, will you?" And then, turning to Harry: "Try to keep a straight face, Harry. Try to show no reaction at all, will you?"

He nodded, uncertain where this would be leading and rather unhappy about the close scrutiny Draco Malfoy, brat prince extraordinaire, gave him.

"Then tell me, Harry," Hermione continued offhandedly. "How long have you been sneaking out to the Shrieking Shack to be alone with yourself?"

Harry simply couldn't help it. His jaw dropped abruptly and an incomprehensible, gurgling sound escaped his mouth. He felt his eyes grow wide and a blush rising to his cheek, and saw Draco Malfoy smacking his own forehead with frustration.

"I think I understand," The blond drawled, amusement dripping heavily in his voice. "Gryffindors."

If Harry had expected Hermione to protest, he had been wrong. She simply cocked a brow and nodded grimly. "Indeed," She repeated. "No chance to add further spice to our plans as long as he is like that."

"What did you try with him," Draco now asked, circling Harry as if he was a horse for sale.

"Everything I could think of," Hermione answered. "Not that it was much, mind you. I never ran through the sort of teaching you did, and all I know about pretending evolved naturally over the years…"

"Is this a roundabout request to teach him some pureblood discipline," Draco asked, the amusement now threatening to boil over into a hearty laughter.

Hermione grinned. "Turn him into a Malfoy if you manage," She challenged.

"Excuse me!" Harry found that he had finally relocated his tongue. "Could you two please stop talking as if I didn't exist? What if I don't want that precious 'pureblood discipline'?"

"You wanted to learn, Harry," Hermione answered, her smile fading away like mist over the Great Lake. "Hiding your emotions and thoughts is one of the most basic lessons I can offer. Charms and spells may protect your mind from invasion, but if your enemies can read their answers in your eyes, you will never survive. And survive is what you must learn. It is also exactly what pureblood children like Draco are taught from their first conscious moments onward. Their control must be perfect, their discipline immaculate and their behaviour always, always up to top standards. Especially when their father is a bastard like Lucius Malfoy."

She didn't turn around to Draco or shoot him an apologizing glance for insulting his father, and to his surprise, Harry saw that Draco nodded in grim affirmation.

For one moment, Harry's brain seemed to overheat as he tried to take in the changes of his situation. Not two weeks ago, he had been a slightly depressed schoolboy with a talent for mischief and a clear knowledge of who his enemies were: Voldemort with his Death Eaters and the Slytherins. Now he had found out that his best friend belonged to the one category and was forced into a room with one of the other, hoping to learn from him the art of deception.

For that one moment, he wished that the old Harry were back, the one that would protest and shout and be generally too righteous for his own good. Then, his eyes met Draco's, and though the Slytherin's face was a cool mask as always, he could see the uncertainty in him, lingering just below the surface and mirroring his own. And he nodded.

"But don't expect me to go and mistreat Gryffindors," He warned, and saw an identical smile form on the faces of Hermione and Draco.

"That wish develops naturally with the time," Draco answered, and Harry could have sworn he saw Hermione nod from the corner of his eyes.

"Right then," She suddenly announced. "I will ask Severus to clear this area for you. Just be sure to use it only on afternoons. He doesn't like people to get in his way, as both of you know."

Silently, she hugged them, one after the other, and again Harry marvelled at the sheer absurdity of the situation. There they were, two archenemies since childhood, bound together by one woman they both loved. Wanting this to work, and if only for her.

She had nearly reached the door to the winding staircase, when Harry decided to pay her back, at least a little, for the turmoil of the day.

"Before you go, tell me, Hermione," He called after her and she turned back towards them willingly. "How long since you stopped wearing push-up bras that you filled out with toilet paper?"

He had hoped for a reaction, any reaction on her face that would betray her and ease his frustration, but though Draco burst into a sudden fit of laughter, her face remained a smooth, unreadable landscape. Not a muscle moved. She didn't even blink.

Only when she had shown him her perfect self control did she smile and nod in approval.

"Good, Harry," She said with an amused look at Draco who was still snorting with laughter. "Quite good. But not nearly enough to get me. You will learn that from Draco, too, I hope."

And with that she left them in Snape's private gym, a Gryffindor and a Slytherin, eyeing each other as if the other was suffering from a dangerous disease.

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But introducing Harry to his Slytherin side wasn't her only problem. School work was nothing to her, especially as Severus and Professor McGonagall had stopped accepting her essays weeks ago, telling her that she was far beyond class level anyway and that she had better concentrate on things far more important. But the mere necessity of her presence during lessons took away time that was desperately needed in other areas.

The more she managed to strengthen her position with Voldemort and the Inner Circle, the bigger were her chances to be called away. Her Dark Mark burnt now more than once a week, and though her little trick had taken care of the more dangerous aspects of her relationship with Lucius, still there was MacNair to be worried about, who had betrayed her to the Ministry at the possible cost of exposing the identity of all those Inner Circle members, and Justin, who was at his mercy and suffering visibly.

She and Severus hadn't decided on what to do yet, and deep down, Hermione knew that there was only one possible solution to this problem. But still she fought against it, for the thought of planning and executing a murder, even that of a Death Eater as repulsive as MacNair, sent shudders down her spine.

It was this she thought about, sitting in Severus' library and drinking tea, when a letter from Dumbledore arrived, telling her that she and Harry would be introduced into the Order this very evening.

All of a sudden she was nervous. Of course she knew how to behave, Severus and she had developed a strategy weeks ago, but those men and women weren't the Inner Circle for nothing. All of them possessed exceptional talents, and though she knew Dumbledore, McGonagall, Severus and Remus to be on her side, there was much that could go wrong.

They had decided against exposing her real job to them, if only to keep Molly Weasley from exploding with indignation, and she hoped to leave it that way as long as possible. But that would require a careful act not only from her, but from the others as well. Especially from Severus, but she expected him to enjoy their banters tremendously. She hadn't forgotten his passionate acting during the poisoning episode.

Gathering the things she would need into her worn school bag, she flooed back to her Head Girl's room, just in time for the knock on her door that had to be Harry. When she opened her connection door to the Common Room, she found him nervous but composed. Obviously, the lessons with Draco were bearing fruit.

She waved him inside and closed the door silently before hugging him. He had asked Ron if he wished to join them and the Order, but had received nothing but an angry grunt, a bitter comment about his "new friends" and a backside turned towards him. Hermione knew how much Ron's behaviour hurt Harry, but every time she had tried to approach Ron herself, the reaction had been much worse.

Perhaps it was best to let him simmer for a while. It had taken him weeks, after all, to realize how stupid his anger had been during the Triwizard Tournament. She hoped that Ron would come around, and if not, it simply couldn't be helped.

At exactly a quarter to six, they left her room and walked down the great stairs, meeting Dumbledore at their foot as it had been planned. He greeted them courteously and with his omnipresent twinkle, but it was clear from his behaviour that he was preoccupied, perhaps even worried. Not only Hermione's secret identity had to be taken into consideration, but also Harry's performance in front of the Order.

He was, after all, their saviour, and it wouldn't do for him to show ignorance or a lacking maturity. Hermione simply hoped that he was well prepared and that her plan would serve to divert attention from the Boy Who Lived as much as possible.

They followed Dumbledore down to the entrance of the Great Hall, where they turned left into a seldomly used corridor. After a series of abrupt turnings, they came to a halt in front of yet another grubby old tapestry, very much alike to the magical entrance to Severus' quarters.

"At this rate, I'm going to be used to them very soon," Harry whispered to Hermione and saw her smile in response. For a moment, she found his hand and pressed it tightly, hidden in the folds of their school robes. He answered the pressure, hoping to convey reassurance. He felt surprisingly calm and well prepared, and though it itched him to no end, he knew that he had Draco to thank for that.

"Ready, my dears?" Dumbledore inquired, and, when they nodded, placed both hands on the tapestry and murmured: "I will not choose a password connected to sweets."

When the tapestry started to glow in a golden light, he turned around to Harry and Hermione and smiled. "Severus is in charge of the ward system. This was the password he set for me, though I have no idea why."

Not bothering to hide their amusement, Harry and Hermione followed their Headmaster through the golden light.

The room they stepped into took Harry's breath away. It was huge, with a high, strangely charmed ceiling and colourful rugs on the polished stone floor. It seemed divided into a living room area, where sofas and armchairs were forming little groups and the walls were lined with bookcases, and another area that projected a more formal, serious atmosphere. This part of the room was dominated by a huge, oval table and at least forty chairs that lined it. Harry noticed several doors opening to other rooms and a series of wall hangings, similar to that through which they had entered.

He turned to Hermione and saw an exaggerated expression of surprise and delight on her face, no doubt due to the amount of reading material this place held. But she was right to be impressed, he thought, for in stark contrast to the cluttered kitchen of Grimmauld Place, this room breathed power and authority, inviting its inhabitants to linger, plan and talk.

It was also much better organized, he couldn't help thinking.

"Welcome to the Headquarters of the Order of the Phoenix!" Dumbledore interrupted his thoughts. Harry raised his eyes to the old wizard's face and couldn't suppress a smile – Dumbledore's pride in this place was all too clearly displayed on his face.

"An improvement to our old Headquarters, I must say," Dumbledore continued, touching Harry's shoulder and directing his glance towards the three huge fireplaces that were situated side by side on one end of the room. "Those three fireplaces connect to different areas of the floo network. They are all secured with a special wards system that Severus developed. I have no idea how exactly it works, but it ensures that only members of the Order can come through or leave through it. One connects to the internal Hogwarts floo network, one leads to our safe houses and the last is a one way fireplace that is connected to the general wizarding network."

He gestured towards the doors Harry had noticed before, and towards the wall hangings. "The doors lead to several offices, one is mine and another is used by our dear spymaster. The magic tapestries are connected to the private chambers of quite a few Order members, including Severus' chambers, my Headmaster's office and the Burrow. The ceiling is charmed to show a map of Great Britain, on which our Safe Houses are shown as well as the properties of known Death Eaters and areas of recent dark activities. I will teach you the spells to zoom in on every area you like tonight."

Harry couldn't help gasping as he took in the enormous map that stretched over his head. Everything seemed so… practical, so well ordered and organised. Quite different actually from what he had thought the Order to be back in fifth year. It seemed that somewhere along the way, a bunch of intelligent individuals had turned into a professional organisation.

Hermione was staring, too, but the overload of emotions on her face alone told Harry that this was more an act than anything else. And when she leaned over to him, to whisper into his ear, the dry amusement in her voice confirmed his suspicion. "Like the changes Severus made?" She asked him.

"It's brilliant," He answered breathlessly, forgetting for a moment that it was his hated Potions Master he was complimenting.

The meeting wouldn't begin before half past seven, and Hermione and Harry took the time to explore their new "second home", as Dumbledore had put it. Greeting the members that stepped into the room one by one, Harry soon found himself included in a wild discussion between Remus Lupin and Mad-Eye Moody. He was surprised how easy he seemed to fit in, how they accepted him without questioning, and just hoped that the rest of the evening would run as smooth as these first minutes.

Hermione however had barely spared a look towards the men and women that stepped through fireplaces, office doors and glowing tapestries. Her eyes were rooted to the books, and her hands itched quite visibly to take out some of the older volumes.

Harry knew that she was planning to hide her identity as spy, and understood that she was trying to act her know-it-all self as best she could, but he still was irritated with the way she seemed to ignore everybody around them. Disengaging from the group that surrounded him, he stepped besides her with the intention of coaxing her away from the books, when something in the room's atmosphere changed.

"Miss Granger," A cold voice suddenly snarled and they both whirled around to meet their Potions Master's irate eyes. He had obviously just entered through one of the office doors, and Harry couldn't help but notice that the others were watching them with close attention. "Kindly refrain from touching everything you see. Some of these books are too valuable to be violated by sticky teenager hands."

_He looks as if he hated her_, Harry thought in shock, but when he turned around to see how Hermione dealt with this, he found very much the same expression on her face, only that she managed to make it look like childish stubbornness instead. _What are the two playing at?_

He saw looks of surprise and irritation settle on the Order members' faces. Only Remus and McGonagall seemed barely able to hide their amusement. Those who had watched Harry since entering the room now turned towards the confrontation between Hermione Granger and their Spymaster.

_They are strengthening her role as harmless know-it-all_, He realized, _And at the same time diverting general attention from me._

"Unfortunately, my influence wasn't enough to keep you two well away from these Headquarters," Snape continued, eyes still fixed on Hermione. "As it is, I will have to endure your presence for the time being. But if you ever annoy me with your intolerable know-it-all attitude again or lay your hands on documents not intended for the curiosity of little girls, I will personally throw you out of these chambers, is that clear?"

Their eyes locked as Hermione's lips started to tremble.

_How do you feel, my dear_, His cold, derisive eyes asked her warmly, and while she commanded an embarrassed blush to her cheeks, she sent him a smile.

_Quite well, Severus. A bit excited, perhaps. But judging from the dumbfounded faces around us, this will be quite a lot of fun._

"Perfectly clear, Sir," She whispered, and he nodded abruptly.

_I sincerely hope so_, he answered and ended the connection, striding over to his place at the foot of the table, opposite to where the Headmaster had already taken place.

As instructed, Hermione and Harry remained standing while the Order took their places and Dumbledore began the meeting.

"I have the honour to introduce two new candidates for the Inner Circle today," He announced after everyone had settled down. "You all know them, and so I will cut short the formalities. Who agrees to grant full membership to Hermione Granger?"

Most hands rose into the air without hesitation. Only Mad-Eye Moody and Molly Weasley took their time. The old auror had been most vocal in his beliefs that "small girls had no place in a battle", and Mrs Weasley would have kept everyone younger than thirty from the meetings, if possible.

But both finally complied, and it was only Snape's hand that remained lying on the table, unmoved. The look he sent her was pure venom.

"Hermione Granger is hereby accepted into the Inner Circle," Dumbledore announced, his blue eyes twinkling friendly. "Please take a seat, my dear."

Hermione nodded, and, clutching her school bag to her breast, rounded the table to where free chairs were available.

"Who then agrees to grant full membership to Harry Potter?" Dumbledore continued, and this time, even Snape raised his hand without a moment's hesitation. Harry was accepted and chose a place beside Hermione, glad that he had been managed to hide his nervousness from the Order.

And thus, without further formalities, the meeting of the Inner Circle began.

Dumbledore had told them beforehand that every Order member would willingly answer their questions after the main meeting was over, so Harry simply leaned back and listened, willing to let his questions wait. But he was pleasantly surprised by how much Hermione had taught him over the last few weeks. Connections that had been invisible to him before now became quite clear, and he was even able to comment on a few points. He could see grudging respect even in the face of Moody when he remarked that Fudge's move against magical creatures could be used to establish closer contact with Gringotts, and that Ludo Bagman and his still unclear Goblin-affair should be considered as further fuel.

Surprisingly enough, Snape managed an unheard of level of civility with the Boy Who Lived, ignoring him most of the time, but still answering his questions without the cold contempt they were both used to. Instead, he lavished all his scorn upon Hermione.

Throughout the Order meeting, she had barely lifted her head from a thick notebook in which she scribbled without a moment's pause, no doubt managing a nearly word perfect reproduction of the meeting. She blushed when Snape sneered at her and told her that every scrap of paper concerning the Order work had to remain in these quarters, and that they were using an Automatic Quill for good reason, but still she scribbled on, as if she could hide from his scowls and the curious stares other Order members gave her.

Harry could see surprise in many faces when the meeting proceeded without her asking a single question or offering a comment. Most, especially Remus Lupin perhaps, had expected more from the "brightest witch of her age". It seemed to most of them, Harry could read in their eyes, as if that reputation hadn't been justly earned. In comparison to the Boy Who Lived, Hermione Granger paled to a not so interesting, over-enthusiastic schoolgirl. No doubt the impression she wanted to produce, Harry thought quietly.

"What news from the Master Spy?" Tonks finally inquired, and most of the Order members leaned forward in interest.

Severus smiled darkly. "The French Order of Jeanne d'Arc has refused collaboration with Voldemort, thanks to our timely intervention," He announced, and whoops and shouts of joy suddenly filled the council room.

When all had silenced down again, Dumbledore, probably noticing the confused expressions on Hermione's and Harry's face, leaned forward to explain.

"The Order of Jeanne d'Arc is a group of conservative pure-blood wizards, situated in Paris. They are powerful not only because of their prominent members, but also because of the great regard French wizards are holding them in. Voldemort has been planning to contact them to offer an alliance for some time. Thanks to our Master Spy, we discovered these plans early enough to send Madame Maxime and a delegation of renowned French wizards there, who managed to convince the Order of the foolishness of such an alliance. This is not the first case in which timely information from our spy prevented a catastrophe from happening."

"Who is this Master Spy?" Harry asked, his confusion not cleared by the explanation. "And why isn't he here to report himself?"

"Because we have no idea who he is, Potter," Moody answered, and the angry look on his face made abundantly clear what he thought about that fact. "Only Dumbledore and Snape know his identity, and they refuse adamantly to inform us fully, though that would be the only decent thing to do."

"All _we_ mere mortals are allowed to know is that he approached Albus about six months ago, offering him information from the Inner Circle of Voldemort himself, and that this information has been invaluable to us," Bill continued. "I don't know how many ambushes we managed to escape because he tipped us off."

"Whoever he is, he is bloody brilliant," Tonks, awe in her voice.

As understanding filled his head, Harry leaned back heavily in his chair. This Master Spy they were talking about was Hermione! She and Dumbledore had both explained to him how important her work was, but never had he imagined that she could be the primary source of information for the Order!

He turned around to meet her eyes, but before he could do so, she had addressed the Order for the first time, in a voice smaller and more childish than he was used to hear from her.

"But isn't this terribly dangerous?" She asked, trembling a bit at the thought of it.

_She really is a brilliant actress_, Harry thought as he watched her face, a little pale and filled with seriousness on behalf of this poor, unknown man who risked his life for them.

"If I could take points here, I would do so for the stupidity of this question, Miss Granger," Snape snarled. "Of course it is dangerous. Do you think all he does is take tea with the Dark Lord?"

"It is the most dangerous thing you can imagine, Hermione, and none of us could probably pull it off successfully," Arthur Weasley answered.

Remus, who was sitting to the left of the Weasleys, was staring at Hermione in shock, his eyes widened in disbelief at her cold bloodedness, and Harry felt very much the same. There she sat, calmly asking questions about herself as if all this had nothing to do with her at all.

"After Severus was detected," Arthur continued. "We were very worried that our last source of information had been cut off and we didn't believe this new spy to last very long. No one has, before. But Severus here assures us that our unknown Master is the most talented spy he has ever met, probably more able than Severus himself, and so we can only hope that he will succeed where all others failed."

"He or she," Tonks remarked. "We do not know the gender, Arthur."

"Oh, but surely a woman couldn't do such a thing," Hermione protested in shock and earned a choking sound from Remus for her efforts.

"I have had quite enough of your stupidity for today, Miss Granger," Snape hissed. "Be a good girl and do what you manage best: take notes and be quiet!"

Again, Hermione blushed and lowered her head to the table, but Harry could have sworn that he saw amusement in the dark depths of his Potions Master's eyes.

He didn't know what confused him more – that these two were hoodwinking the whole venerable Order of the Phoenix with ease, or that they were obviously enjoying it immensely.


	37. Hatred and Fear

**Hatred and Fear**

"Potter is coming along quite nicely," Severus commented the next morning and threw a hex at her.

Hermione, so surprised by the unexpected compliment that she nearly missed his knife slashing down at her, realized his tactic a heartbeat too late.

"That's not fair," She protested, throwing herself to the side and bombarding him with a quick succession of stunners. "Irritating me in such a way!"

His grin, exposing the tips of his canines, might have looked dangerous and aggressive to most, but to Hermione it was the excitement of battle that shone in his eyes, and she knew that her face probably mirrored his sentiments exactly.

"All is fair in war," He grinned, blocked her stunners with a dome of green light and threw an answering curse at her.

They had finally started to combine magical and physical attacks into something Severus called a "Martial Duel", something she had read about in the more obscure DADA texts of the Hogwarts library. Only few wizards possessed the talent these days, but Hermione had found that she enjoyed this advanced level of duelling tremendously.

To survive it, you needed excellent reflexes, a wide array of curses, hexes and other spells that you could perform with or without wand, and a hand for the dirty aspects of physical fighting. Thanks to her aunt, her own studies and her training with Severus, she possessed all of that in an amount sufficient to cause even her Spymaster problems.

She had nearly defeated him last time. That was the only reason why he now used cunning instead of straightforward fighting, she thought amusedly.

"It's Draco's help that does it," She took up the thread of their conversation after she had aimed a high kick at his head. "I don't know how they are doing it, but they seem to work well together. They have even started to stage quite impressive fights."

Severus grinned and nodded again. He had heard about those. Minerva had told him about one that had taken place in front of the Charms classroom, and had nearly caused poor Professor Flitwick a heart attack. According to him, they had been very near killing each other. According to them, it had been great fun.

"What about MacNair," He now asked, brought his knife in low and slashed at her left thigh. But this time around she had been prepared and nearly kicked his knife out of his hand.

"Oh no, it won't work a second time," She panted and countered with a diagonal slash that ruined yet another one of his shirts.

"Neither will putting the question off till all eternity," He warned her, aimed a last kick at her stomach and then raised his knife in a ritual gesture.

"Enough for today," He said, and she responded with a gesture mirroring his own. "You did well."

"Oh, compliments all over the place," She grinned and re-sheathed her translucent knife. "You could at least admit that I nearly had you."

"If such a thing were the case, I would certainly admit it. You were miles away!"

She didn't honour him with an answer, just threw back her head in mock defiance and her hair, only barely controlled by her slide, escaped from its confinements and flowed over her shoulders. He had to avert his face to hide his reaction.

"You are right about MacNair, though," She told him while he concentrated on cleaning his knife, his back turned towards her. "We have to do something."

"What do you propose?" His voice lacked all expression, but he hoped she would attribute it to concentration and the exhaustion after a good fight.

"The only thing possible. Dispose of him. He is too dangerous to catch him or hand him over to the Ministry. But I haven't decided how to do it best, yet."

"We should find a way to use his death to your advantage among the Death Eaters. Perhaps if we let him appear disloyal…"

"If we let them find his body, I can't be the one to kill him," She warned him, drying her neck and forehead with a towel. "Voldemort might be able to detect my magical signature."

"I didn't mean you to do it," The topic had helped to divert his thoughts from her face, hair and body, and he was able to turn back around to her, to meet her eyes and open their secret connection.

_It is time for me to return to the field. I have started to feel old, and we don't want me to become rusty. _

_I can't even begin to tell you how unlikely that is,_ She answered quietly. _Dinner tonight?_

He shook his head and the disappointment in her face made his heart ache. _Albus and Moody. It will be a very long evening._

"I wonder how you manage to teach without falling asleep," She commented aloud, smiling at him to show that she didn't mind.

"Ah," He answered. "That is one of the greater miracles of existence."

0o0o0o0o0o0o0o00o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o

The afternoon found her in one of the numerous courtyards, sitting together with Harry under an old willow. They had been discussing Order matters for some time, but soon their conversation swayed to more general matters.

"Strange, isn't it? That this year will be our last one in Hogwarts?" Harry asked her, tilting back his head and looking up to the sunny sky above them.

Hermione shrugged. "It will be a relief," She said quietly. "I haven't felt like a student for ages, and school has become a nuisance that keeps me from things which need to be done." She smiled, her face softening in the weak rays of the sun. "And I'd be very surprised if the two of us wouldn't stay at Hogwarts. Security is best here, and now that the Order's Headquarters have moved…"

"True," Harry acknowledged. "But it won't be the same."

He sighed. "It isn't the same even now. With Ron still angry at us, and all our spare time spent with Order business – I can't remember when I last had a free day."

"Christmas," Hermione answered after a moment.

"Yes, Christmas," Harry agreed, then turned towards her and examined her critically, his sharp, inquisitive eyes scanning her face. "Did you really visit your parents over Christmas? I thought they were in hiding somewhere in America?"

Hermione nodded, and gave a sigh of her own. "I was with Severus," She admitted silently. "Training, talking, planning. And a good thing it was, for I nearly died on Christmas. He saved my life that day."

"Good thing you have him," Harry commented and saw her shoulders relax. It was only a minimal change, barely visible, but it told him that she was still insecure when her connection with Snape was brought up in his presence.

"I don't know what to do about Ron," She admitted after a moment. "I'm getting terribly nervous whenever I come near him, but I don't know how to make peace with him."

Harry's open laugh surprised her. "In all my years of being mate with Ron," He said. "I have never managed to make peace with him. He was always the one to take the first step."

He chuckled. "A Weasley's wrath can only overcome by a Weasley, I guess."

Suddenly, Hermione groaned and tried to hide behind Harry.

"Speaking of the devil," She whispered, and he turned around to see Luna, Neville and Ginny marching towards them, a very reluctant Ron in their midst.

"Want to leave? I can handle him on my own," Harry suggested in a whisper, and for a moment, Hermione seemed more than tempted to take his offer. But then she shook her head, lifted it and sat very straight suddenly.

"This is childish," She answered. "He will have to get along with me sooner or later!"

Her chin raised in defiance, she greeted the group with a warm smile. "Ginny, Luna," She hailed the girls. "Been some time! It's good to see you again."

"I'm not the only one you haven't talked to in quite some time," Ginny answered, straight to the point as always. "Neville, Luna and me have decided that we've had enough of this stupid quarrel. Whatever's the reason why you three have stopped talking, you will get over it. Now."

Harry had to hide a grin at her direct approach. What had Draco said about Gryffindors the other day? _As subtle as an attacking hippogriff. _He'd never believed this day to come, but in his heart, he couldn't help but agree with the Slytherin.

"It isn't that simple, Ginny," He cautioned her, but his eyes were fixed on Ron, telling him that this message was meant for his own ears alone. "There are many things going on between Ron and us, and I don't think this is the right time or place to discuss…"

"Oh, I think it is even simpler," Ron disagreed roughly, his face flushed with anger as it was nearly every time they met these days. "You have decided to change team and have abandoned your friends. I don't think there's much going on besides that."

"Let us go to Hermione's room," Harry offered in an attempt to stop the outburst from happening in the open, in the presence of people who couldn't even begin to understand the situation. "This isn't for the eyes and ears of others, Ron."

"On the contrary," Ginny cut in, and both Luna and Neville nodded their agreement. "We are very involved in this, Harry. You two barely spent any time in the Common Room these days. You're always hiding in Hermione's room, or wherever you are. Luna and me can't even see you in lessons, so we barely have a chance to talk to you. We miss you! And although Ron is too much of a prat to admit it, he's missing you, too."

"I'm not," Ron shouted, his face turning redder by the second. "And they have much better things to do than spend time with me!"

Neville sighed, his broad, friendly face puckered in unhappiness. "I don't understand you three," He said quietly. "Since first year, you have always been best friends. There was nothing that could divide you. You fought together, you spent time together, and you shared everything. Why has that changed now? Unless…" Suddenly, his face reddened even more than Ron's. "Unless there's something going on between you two, and Ron's jealous…"

"Oh no, not between Harry and her," Ron disagreed bitterly. "She has much bigger fish to fry than just the Boy Who Lived, don't you, Hermione? Men of wealth and importance…"

"Ron, please," Hermione spoke for the first time. "You know this is about more than just us! We have no right to concentrate on our own wishes alone when there's a war going on around us! It is not the time for…"

"You are one to talk," He interrupted her, his face an ugly grimace of anger and hatred. "You with your own little Slytherin haven! Don't tell me you don't enjoy how they grovel around you! You disgust me, Hermione! I will never…"

"Enough!" Hermione suddenly thundered, her face pale but her voice so full of power and authority that Ron fell silent immediately. The others stared at her in surprise, even Harry, who had never heard that tone from her. Neville had unconsciously stepped away from her and nearly stumbled over Luna, who simply stretched out an arm and steadied him without a word.

Tentatively, Harry put a calming hand on Hermione's shoulder, but she shrugged it of, her lips white with fury. Even though both knew that Ron couldn't talk about her secrets, he had come much too close to their liking, and questions would no doubt follow.

"I can understand your disappointment, and your shock, Ron," She finally continued when the silence around them had grown oppressive. "But there is a limit to what I will accept from you, and you have just reached it. If you want to remain nothing but a self-centred, infantile idiot, so be it! I won't try to make you grow up, or accept responsibilities. But you will stop this sort of behaviour this instance! You have no right to risk plans and activities that have been progressing for months, just because you can't overcome your prejudices and for once use your brain! Grow up, goddamn you!"

Her voice, cold when she began, had turned into a glacier somewhere along her speech, a biting whip of ice and anger that made the others duck away from her. Never had they seen Hermione so angry. Power swirled around her as she sent her words towards Ron like missiles intent on destruction.

And it seemed that she had succeeded. Ron opened his mouth once, twice, his face very pale and his eyes widened comically, but no sound escaped his mouth. Then, he turned on his heel and left the courtyard, his shoulders slumped as if he was carrying a too heavy burden.

"That was unnecessary, Hermione," Ginny said reproachfully after she had recovered from her shock.

"Quite the contrary, Ginny," Hermione replied, her face a smooth mask and her voice pure velvet. "You have no idea how very necessary this was."

"Someone better follow him," Luna announced serenely. "Ronald can be very stupid sometimes."

Ginny sent her a glare that equalled Hermione's voice. "I'll go after him," She announced. "But don't believe this is over yet. I have a lot of questions that want answers."

"I was afraid she would," Hermione sighed once Ginny followed her brother out of the courtyard. "And I must say that my attraction to Obliviate-spells grows by the hour."

Once again, Harry simply placed a calming hand on her shoulder, and this time she nodded quietly. Her eyes seemed to ask for forgiveness, and for a moment, he increased the pressure of his hand, to tell her that it was all right.

Silence reigned in the courtyard while Hermione and Harry waited for Ginny to return. Luna was happily gazing at something only she could see, and Neville looked very much as if he wanted to vanish from the face of the earth.

Ginny returned all too soon, but instead of the determined expression they had expected her to wear, her face betrayed a mounting panic.

"Ron's heading towards the Forbidden Forest," She panted. "He's nearly reached the wards. I tried to talk to him, but he simply ignored me! It's dangerous out there, and it's gonna be dark soon!"

"We should call a teacher," Hermione proposed, but her eyes told Harry that she was talking about an Order member.

"No time," Ginny answered. "Once we've found a teacher Ron will be gone and it will take us ages to find him. We had better follow him!"

Harry groaned in frustration.

"Great," He grunted. "Really great. Ron's pulling one of his idiot stunts and we're here on our own."

"You never had any problems with doing things on our own! If we managed the Department of Mysteries, we should be able to follow Ron into the Forest," Neville pointed out, and Harry groaned once more.

"Don't remind me how stupid I was, Neville. It's really not the right time for this."

"We must do something," Hermione decided. "He's still your friend, Harry."

One month ago, Harry would have looked at her with irritation for pointing out something so obvious. It was yet another reminder for how much he had changed that he now understood her immediately. Whatever the problems between them, Ron was still officially labelled Number Three of the Golden Trio. What better way to hurt the Boy Who Lived and to bind him closer to his last remaining friend Hermione than kill Ron? Every Death Eater would be after him.

"Yes, of course," He murmured, feeling dread rise inside him and seize his throat with an iron grip.

"I propose that we split," She continued, but it sounded less like a proposal than like an order. "You four go and find a teacher while I follow Ron. Make haste!"

One month ago, he would have been infuriated by the proposal. Now, he simply nodded, sprang up and beckoned the others to follow him.

"Are you mad?" Ginny asked. "We're all members of the DA! Harry's much better than you in DADA! You're not going out there alone while we search for a teacher! No way!"

"She's right," Neville agreed, and, like he had done so many years before on the night they had fought for the Philosopher's Stone, stepped into Hermione's way. "I'm not letting you go alone!"

Hermione looked as if she seriously considered another Petrificus Totalus, but after a moment's hesitation, Harry agreed to the others.

"They're right," He said. "We can do this faster and better on ourselves. It isn't worth the trouble." He saw in her face that she had understood – stopping the others would lead to even more questions. This way, they had a good chance to get Ron back to Hogwarts in no time and keep the revelations to a minimum. If all went as he hoped.

"It's a bad idea, Harry," Hermione disagreed. "Please, don't risk it! I don't think you should…"

But Ginny interrupted them once more. "I don't know what you will do," She cried out angrily. "But I'm going to get my brother back now! Discuss strategy all you like, I'm following him!"

And she once more turned and left the courtyard in a run, Luna and Neville following her after only a moment of hesitation.

Harry could have sworn he heard a very shocking word pearl from Hermione's lips as she looked after them in indecision.

"I suppose it would be too much to ask you to stay here?" She then inquired, weariness in her voice.

Harry just looked at her, his face open and honest. "I will if you order me to," He answered quietly. "But they are my friends, too, and I _am_ a pretty good dueller. Coddling me won't help, you know?"

0o0

They caught up with Ginny, Neville and Luna when the three had reached the outer edge of the Forbidden Forest and were preparing themselves to enter, clearly nervous.

"Which way did he go, Ginny," Hermione asked, as if she had never intended to leave them behind.

"I don't know," The redhead answered unhappily. "That way, I think. But I'm not sure…"

Without giving the others a chance to notice, Hermione gestured at Harry to take the lead. She fell in with his steps.

"Keep as quiet as you possibly can, people," Harry advised them in a whisper. "And no unnecessary magic."

"I'll just use a locator spell," Hermione whispered back He knew that her magic wouldn't attract the attention of their enemies – if there were any Death Eaters out there waiting for them - they all knew her magical signature and would simply assumed she had joined in with the hunt.

He noticed that Hermione used a more complex version of the "Point me" charm he had learned for the Third Task of the tournament, and made a mental note to later ask her about it. But most of his mind was fixed on listening, smelling and examining as much of the thick, tangled shrubbery around them as possible.

Fifteen nervous, strained minutes later, they found Ron, sitting on a tree trunk in the middle of a small clearing, brooding and sulking.

"Ron, you prat," Ginny shouted angrily, left her place behind Harry and Hermione and advanced on her surprised brother to soundly slap him on the shoulder. "How can you leave the wards? You put us all in danger!"

"I never asked you to follow me, did I," He growled and received another slap for his answer.

"We should head back," Harry interrupted that sisterly display of affection. "It will be getting dark soon. And Ron," He added, his voice lowered to a dangerous level. "If you ever pull such a stunt again, I will do more than just slap you, believe me."

"I only wanted…"

"Hush," Hermione suddenly interrupted, and something in her voice made them turn around to her. What they saw made Ginny and Neville gasp in surprise.

Instead of the girl they had expected, they found a fighter standing behind them. Wand in hand, her stance low and threatening, her head stretched forward as if she sniffed something in the air, Hermione seemed as focused as a sharp knife.

"Get behind me," She whispered. "Try to keep the trees in your back. Someone's coming."

"But why?" Ginny asked. "You're no better dueller than Harry! And how can you know someone's near us?"

"You wanted to get involved quite badly," Hermione hissed, her eyes and ears fixed on something else only she could perceive." Now you're in the middle of it, and you will obey my orders as Harry does. Immediately!"

There was something in her voice, some jaded authority they couldn't place, that stopped all further protest. As quietly as possible, they gathered behind her, even Ron, although he needed a sharp pull from Harry to comply.

"I don't hear anything…" Ron started sullenly, but he fell silent abruptly when five dark shapes entered the clearing in a run.

Death Eaters.

Full grown.

Five of them.

Oh shit.

They stopped moving in perfect unison, not the kind of awkward standstill Harry would have managed, and raised their wands towards them.

"Look at that," One of them sneered. "Little Harry Potter hiding behind a girl. But she won't help you, little Harry. In fact, she's the last person you should be near at the moment."

He had probably meant Harry to react with confused stupidity, trying to better his chances for an attack. But Harry just raised his hand to stifle the murmurs rising among his friends, and stared at the Death Eater with cold hate. The man's eyes narrowed behind his mask. He opened his mouth to continue, when the clearing suddenly exploded into action.

It happened all in a heartbeat, too fast to see clearly, much less react.

Before the Death Eaters could even move, before Harry and Ron had managed to draw their wands, Hermione's empty right hand was suddenly filled with a gleaming dagger, and without a word, without a twitch of a muscle, she descended on one unsuspecting Death Eater with the stealth of a large cat and ran him through.

His body hadn´t even dropped to the ground when she had already whirled around to another black clad figure and cut his throat in a movement so precise that it took their breath away.

The other three Death Eaters had finally come to their senses. To see a student, and their supposed spy no less, kill two of them with such careless efficiency had shocked even those men. But now they had finally recovered and raised their wand for the killing curse.

"Ava…" One of them started, but Hermione flicked her wrist towards them as if she was throwing something.

And the Death Eaters exploded into a ball of fire.

It took them less than a minute to die, and she kept her wand trained on them the entire time. When the flames had flickered out, she prodded one of them with her booted foot and nodded in satisfaction at the utter lack of reaction.

"Stay behind," She ordered her friends without sparing a glance at them. "We don't know whether there are more in the vicinity."

Silence reigned the clearing while Hermione carried out several tracking and decloaking charms in rapid succession.

She then placed two glittering jewels in the middle of the clearing. Harry recognized them as an emergency alarm and one of the apparition directors they had been handed over when entering the Order. Any member trying to find them would automatically apparate to that jewel. He would never have thought of using it.

"All clear at the moment," She then continued, and something in her voice told Harry that she addressed him. "Explain everything to them, Harry. I´ll take care of this mess."

"But Hermione," He protested weakly. He had seen much cruelty over the years, but the way his friend had slaughtered those men, without a moment´s consideration, had shocked him deeply. "We didn´t have to kill them all! We could have stunned them…"

"And risk them escaping and blowing my cover?" Hermione had started to search the Death Eaters pockets, but now she looked up, her eyes as cool and calm as glaciers. "I think not. This means five men less on Voldemort´s side. No great loss, Harry."

"But…"

"Would somebody tell us what is going on?" Ginny demanded from behind Harry.

Turning around to his friends, Harry only now realized the state of them. They were clearly frightened, though Ginny fought this feeling as she did usually, with mounting anger. Neville, however, looked as if he would faint every minute, and even Luna had lost some of her usual serenity and was examining the five corpses in front of them with wide eyes.

Ron, however, was staring at Hermione as if his every nightmare had finally come true.

"She is a Death Eater, that's what going on," He spat viciously. Hermione didn't even look up from what she was doing to the corpses that littered the ground.

"That's not true, Ron. And considering that you're only alive because she saved us right now, a little respect wouldn't hurt you! She's a spy," He explained to the others, turning away from Ron whose eyes had narrowed in fury. "She has been for half a year now. She and I are both members of the Order, and Hermione has contacted Dumbledore already. Don't worry, help will be here any minute."

"But why did she kill them," Neville asked, his lower lip trembling slightly in shock. "And… how?"

"I don't know," Harry shrugged helplessly, his eyes drawn towards Hermione again, who was circling the small clearing, still unnaturally calmly.

"She has many hidden talents," He offered his friends, and only Luna nodded as if this explained anything. Ron was still watching Hermione with burning eyes, his face twisted into an ugly grimace of hate.

Barely two minutes passed before McGonagall, Snape and Remus Lupin apparated onto the scene, Lupin´s shocked intake of breath alerting Harry to the presence of their teachers. Hermione calmly re-sheathed her wand that had whipped out at the sound of their arrival, and turned towards Snape and McGonagall.

"No one got away," She reported calmly.

"Good work, Hermione," McGonagall commented appraisingly at the view before her. "Anybody wounded?"

"No." Her voice was monotonous like that of some machine, Harry noticed with horror, and suddenly he remembered a strange film Dudley had always loved, something about a killer robot sent from the future to eliminate a woman and her unborn child. He shuddered and tugged his hands deeper into his pockets, as if to get rid of these dark thoughts.

Suddenly, he felt a hand on his shoulder. It was Remus, trying to usher him and the others away from the corpses, but Harry refused that soft pressure, for now Snape was stepping forwards, catching Hermione´s eyes with his dark, blazing ones.

_What are they doing?_ He wondered when the silence between his friend and the Spymaster stretched. _I can understand that he was worried, but it isn´t like him just to stare at her like that!_

Abruptly, Snape broke the eye contact and nodded briskly.

"Well done," He said, as if in answer to some report, and again Harry wondered what was going on. "Let´s have a look at their faces, then."

Hermione just nodded and stepped lightly aside, offering him access to her prey.

Removing masks and hoods, Snape let his eyes linger on the corpses. Harry craned his neck to get a better look, but the faces were hidden from view.

"Anyone from the Inner Circle?" Snape asked expressionless.

"Atricus," Hermione answered, as cold as Snape. "Has been a member for three months. Introduced by MacNair."

Silence again. Harry noticed that Snape made no move to search the Death Eaters. His eyebrows rose in surprise, for he had never seen his meticulous Potions Master trust in anybody else's work. That he simply assumed Hermione would have worked thoroughly told Harry more about their relationship than the man´s hand, resting on Hermione´s shoulder for less than a second.

McGonagall joined Snape after a moment, her eyes glued to the faces of the dead attackers.

There was something strange in the way they lingered near the corpses, some expression in their face Harry couldn't place. But only when Remus walked over and cried out in shock did he find the courage to approach the dead. Among unknown men, covered in blood or their own, burnt skin, an all too familiar face caught him by surprise.

Theodore Nott, his body uninjured except the red line that marred his throat like a scarlet ribbon. Hermione had killed one of their schoolmates.

"But that's…," Harry gasped, immediately silenced by a warning glare and a slight shaking of the head from Snape. The others didn't have to know who had led the Death Eaters to them. They would never feel safe inside Hogwarts again if they did.

As Harry would never feel safe again. He stared into the dead face of the boy he had shared classes with this very morning, his eyes burning and his stomach absolutely hollow. How could he betray them? He was no older than they, and still he had been willing to kill them.

As Hermione had killed him, without a moment of hesitation.

"Does he have the mark?" He asked, his throat closing and giving him the feeling to suffocate.

Hermione shook her head. "They have stopped marking the Slytherins that attend school," She answered, still in that horribly calm, cool voice. "It became too risky after Severus was discovered as a traitor. They expected him to control their arms regularly, as he, in fact, had done before."

"I am so sorry you had to do that, Hermione," Remus said and walked closer to her, placing a hand on her shoulder. "It must be a terrible feeling."

The moment his hand connected with her body, Hermione tensed and stepped away quickly.

"He was a Death Eater," She answered, still expressionless, as if it explained everything and rendered this lost life unimportant. "This is my job."

Remus opened his mouth to say something, his eyes wide with surprise and shock. He looked exactly like Harry had felt after he had witnessed her by-the-way cruelty. Before their DADA teacher could collect his thoughts and reply however, Hermione had moved away from them, leaving the two Gryffindors to their worried silence.

"We should leave immediately," Snape informed them. "We have no idea if reinforcement is meant to arrive soon, and we definitely don't want to meet them."

They aparated to the edge of Hogwarts' wards, Remus and McGonagall taking Ginny and Luna with them, and walked on towards the castle from there, the lifeless bodies of their peer and his fellow Death Eaters floating besides their teachers. Harry noticed that Hermione and Snape had fallen back, and without conscious thought, he slowed down his steps until the front group had lost sight of him. Only then did he turn around and head back towards his friend and her mentor.

He hadn't talked about it to Remus or his friends, but her cruel efficiency had shocked him deeply. Even with all she had lived through during the last months, he hadn't believed her able of such a deed. That she should have changed so completely from the caring person she had once been worried him, and that she hadn't spared the corpses a second look worried him even more.

But when he reached a cluster of trees, half hiding behind an old oak, all he could do was prevent a shocked gasp from leaving his throat, for here was Hermione, cool, emotionless Hermione, leaning into the Potions Master and sobbing into his robes.

"I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, Severus," She whispered, clinging to him with all her strength. "I didn't know it was him! I swear, or I wouldn't have…"

"There was no way you could have known. Stop hurting yourself, Hermione," Snape replied calmly, but his voice was hoarse, and, now that Harry looked closer, his face had taken on an ashen, unhealthy tone.

Nott had been in his house, Harry realized suddenly, he had been under Snape's wing, and his turn to the Death Eaters must seem like a personal failing to Snape.

"But did you see the way the looked at me?" Hermione's voice floated towards him once more, the deep pain in it making him shiver. "As if I was a monster. Even Remus couldn't bear to meet my eyes."

Harry knew what she meant, and Snape did, too, judging from the way his arms closed around her even tighter for a moment. There was nothing Harry could have said to console her for the moment, for they had thought her a monster in the first moment of shock. Harry had seen it in their eyes and felt it in his own heart for a second, too.

Snape was silent for a moment, but when he spoke, his tone shocked Harry even more than the tight embrace they were sharing. If he hadn't gone completely mad, his brooding Potions Master sounded… flirtatious.

"Well, you certainly are the most beautiful and brilliant monster I have ever seen then, Hermione. I wouldn't mind if you decided to hide under my bed," He purred, and the girl laughed in relief, nuzzling even closer into his arms.

Another silence followed, and Harry was just getting ready to retreat as silently as possible, when suddenly Snape spoke again.

"Should we obliviate him?" He asked, his voice as light and unconcerned as if they were talking about the weather. Confused by the sudden change of topic, Harry saw Hermione shake her head against the dark cloth of Snape's robes.

"It's just Harry," She answered. "He has a right to know."

And then, towards the tree behind which Harry was yet recovering from the sudden shock: "You may come out now, Harry. The show's over."

"I… I am really sorry," Harry stammered while he stumbled away from his hiding place. "I was just worried."

Awkwardly, he approached the couple that was still embracing tightly. "You seemed so strange down there, Hermione…" He continued. "I didn't mean to spy!"

He could have slapped himself the moment this last word left his mouth, but to his astonishment, Snape's mouth curved upwards slightly. "Nor could you have done so. We heard you the moment you entered our vicinity. You breathed so loudly, I could have hexed you in the dark."

Harry ignored him completely. "Are you all right, Hermione," He asked, refusing to acknowledge the provocation.

Hermione nodded slowly and hesitatingly stepped away from Snape.

"Emotions aren't something I can afford while there is danger, Harry," She explained softly. "Now that everyone is safe, we can mourn Theodore."

She shared another look with Snape, and this time it was her hand that reached towards his shoulder in support. The Potions Master smiled in answer, but his eyes were bottomless pits and his face was pale like marble as he silently walked away from them towards the castle.

"It's hard for him," Hermione said once the man had left the clearing. "Every Slytherin that turns dark feels like a defeat to him. He blames himself for every single one he has lost over the years. I'm glad I don't have to shoulder a responsibility like that."

"Is that why he prefers the Slytherins in class and mocks the Gryffindors?" Harry asked slowly, thinking that, perhaps, he was finally starting to understand the riddle named Severus Snape.

"No," Hermione shook her head and smiled slightly in the direction where Snape had vanished. "That's because he hates Gryffindors and thinks Slytherins are the superior beings. He is every single bit as prejudiced in that respect as one can be."

Instead of the annoyance Harry would have expected at such a statement, her voice only held amusement and a strange tenderness, and her eyes smiled at something only she could see. It confused him to no end to see her face light up like that for the Head of Slytherin house, the greasy git, bastard in residence.

"What do you find in him, Hermione? Why is he so important? I've been watching you over the last two weeks, and this is more than a partnership born out of necessity. It's much more. Why?"

"Because he knows me Harry," She answered, her face worried and her voice pleading for understanding. "This is nothing against you, or Ron, or the other teachers, but Severus knows me in ways you could never begin to realize."

She took a deep breath, saw the hurt in his face, and hastily explained. "I… When you saw what I did today, you were shocked. Repulsed. I don't hold it against you, Harry, I would have thought exactly the same thing one year ago: How can she judge and end a human life like that? How can she be so inhumanly cruel? What has become of her? If you hadn't been too shocked to move or think, you would have confronted me about this right on the spot. Or you would have turned away from me in horror, like Ron did, and Remus."

Another deep breath, but this one sounded more like a sob. "I saw your faces, Harry. I know what you thought. You… you didn't understand that I was responsible for you and the others, that, as the main spy of the Order, I'm responsible for every single life the Death Eaters destroy. That I have to do terrible things to turn this war to our favour."

She laughed bitterly. "And how should you understand? Even you, who has confronted Voldemort more than once, never saw his true power, never witnessed his true cruelty. You don't know what it is like to do and say things that make you feel so dirty… so ashamed of yourself. I know you respect me, and that you would give your best to understand all this, but I know you never really could. Even this little glimpse into what I have become repulsed you – how could you ever deal with what I am doing with Lucius Malfoy, week after week?"

She paused, her dark, wide open eyes raised to his face. Unable to meet her gaze, Harry turned his head towards one of the huge, leafless trees surrounding him. He knew she was right. Even now did he remember that hollow feeling in his chest, that feeling of disgust even against his better knowledge, that thought: _She has become a monster_.

He couldn't bear to look into her eyes and admit it, so he turned away from her.

"But Severus understands," Hermione finally continued, her voice weak and near to the breaking point. "He has been there, has done all those things, and still he is a person I can respect and admire. He has been to the depths of hell and has returned. He is my strength, Harry, the one person who can remind me again and again what I am doing this for, that it is necessary. And he is my only hope, my one light in the darkness. My only lifeline."

Something in her words made him whirl around to her, and when he finally met her face, he knew what had alerted him. There was a look in Hermione's eyes he had never seen before, a silent determination and burning longing that frightened him and tore at his soul at the same time.

"You love him," He whispered, realization hitting him like a bucketful of cold water.

As if he had slapped her, Hermione stumbled back, nearly losing her footing and collapsing onto the hard earth

"I don't know what you mean…," She stammered, and for the blink of an eye, her perfect mask slipped and revealed a face so frightened and full of panic that he wanted to take the words back. But they had lied to each other too long.

"You love Snape, Hermione. More than you have ever loved someone. I can see it in your face."

"No, Harry!" She cried, and now her voice did break. "I have no idea what you are talking about, this is ridiculous! Snape is my mentor, nothing more…"

For one moment, she was the child-Hermione once more, the girl that had hidden in the bathroom because she had felt all alone in the world, the girl that had screamed for his help when a full grown mountain troll attacked her.

One moment was enough to bridge the distance and fold her into his arms. "It's all right, Hermione," He whispered as he held her close. "You don't have to justify yourself. You don't have to say a thing. I can accept it… I can accept it well enough. Pshhh, don't cry."

And if there had been another observer hidden behind a tree, he could have seen the formidable Master Spy of the Order clinging to the second man this day, once more sobbing her heart out. He could have seen green eyes, determined and lined with worry, watching the trees to keep her safe. No harm would ever come to her in his arms.

xXx

A/N: Right, hoped you all liked this! Tell me about it...

Two little things before you can click the review button: I'm going to update "Had I Known" real soon now, sometime over the next two days. Within the same time, I will post a preview for the next "Lioness" chapter in the future-thread of my forum, so check it out!

Oh, and to all of you who'd like to discuss my story in any possible length: I have created forums to do just that, and I will do my best to answer any question you may have. Just click the link on my profile page!


	38. Solving A Problem

**Solving a Problem**

She had awaited the burning of her Mark from the moment the corpses hit the cold earth, out there in the clearing. But it took Voldemort nearly three hours to react to the disappearance of his Death Eaters.

Hermione had dispatched a letter to Lucius as soon as she had reached the safety of her Head Girl's room, making sure that no one could accuse her of keeping silent. She also knew that Lucius would most likely spend the afternoon in the throne room, waiting for news and discussing plans with the Dark Lord, so that there was only a small chance the letter would reach him in time.

With a bit of luck, Theodore's death would not be in vain, though in quite the opposite direction of Theodore's own wishes.

When a burning pain finally informed her that she was wanted, she tapped her print of John Waterhouse's Circe in a pattern that would send a message to Severus, informing him that she was off, grabbed her invisibility cloak, flooed to her private room near McGonagall's office and was out of the castle and grounds in less than ten minutes.

Her walk through the gloom of Voldemort's castle was spent with occluding exercises. Once more, she went through the sequence of events they had staged earlier this evening, and found them sufficient to convince even the notoriously paranoid Dark Lord.

While Harry, Ron and the others had entered the castle through the front, she had rushed across the ground to where the secret passage allowed her admission. She had managed it to the main entrance in time to see the corpses floating in and to throw a hysterical fit. By the time the other students had pulled themselves together enough to question what had happened, Harry, Ron, Luna, Neville and Ginny had been safely tucked away into the office of Dumbledore, and at dinner they had been able to rejoin the other students, their memories protected in every possible way.

Now, she had only her own memories to worry about, and to protect from his dark grip.

She fell to her knees the moment she entered the throne room and half robbed, half crawled the long way to her Master's feet.

„I have news, My Lord," She announced when it became clear that he wouldn't speak or punish her immediately. „Today, four Death Eaters and Theodore Nott junior attacked Potter and his friends outside the wards, in the Forbidden Forest. They were defeated when Remus Lupin came to their rescue in the last moment. He killed every one of them, using burning curses on three and attacking the other two physically with a knife.

„I didn't find out before hand because Potter had left the grounds secretly with Weasley, hoping to end the quarrel between them. But I did get a good look at the corpses by pretending to be out of my mind with worry. Potter told me everything shortly afterwards."

„Why didn't you inform me the moment you found out, mudblood?" The snake-like voice asked silkily and Hermione couldn't prevent a shiver from running down her spine. Not that she wanted to, really, it always paid off to show the Dark Lord how much you feared him. He liked awe, and he lived on fear.

„The Inner Circle in his wisdom didn't see it fit to grant me the privilege of self controlled apparitione, My Lord," She stated, her voice trembling with worry and respect. „I came as soon as you called me. I did, however, send a letter to Master Malfoy, informing him in detail of the occurrences. I apologize that it didn't reach you in time, My Lord."

„Is this true, Lucius," Voldemort inquired, the icy sensation of his stare vanishing from her body. „Did the mudblood inform you?"

„I spent the whole evening in your vicinity, My Lord," Malfoy answered, stepping towards them with a fluent motion. „As you know, no owl can reach us here, so I wouldn't have been able to receive her letter even if she sent one."

Still prostrated on the ground, Hermione felt grimly satisfied. A stupid answer, in more than one point. Lecturing the Dark Lord about obvious things, admitting to a mistake and questioning another servant that had most likely done better than he – the Dark Lord liked none of those, and he hated it when Malfoy got too cocky. That would mean Cruciatus, if she wasn't completely wrong.

Voldemort didn't grace Lucius with an answer, instead he turned again and beckoned another member of the circle forward.

"Go to Lucius rooms and check for an owl or letter that might be waiting there. Make haste," He ordered the cloaked and masked man, and a soft whisper rose among the group. To send another man into Lucius' quarters was an open declaration of mistrust.

But when the Dark Lord spoke again, all sounds ceased immediately.

"Look up to me," His voice caressed her, like a snake slithering along her every limb and into her heart to squeeze it until it gave up the fight.

She obeyed. There was nothing else to do. And as her brown eye met the red ones of the monster, she felt some part of him slip into her mind, slithering along her thoughts and memories.

She gave him what he wanted. He seemed satisfied. And when the Death Eater he had sent out to fetch her letter returned, parchment in hand, he smiled at her. His pleasure made her feel sick, and she suddenly felt a terrible urge to wash herself clean of this smile, to rub herself raw until no trace of that snake remained on her.

"Hermione," He whispered, and she shuddered. "Dear, sweet, Hermione. You made me proud tonight."

He stretched out his hand and she crawled forward, took it and kissed the slimy skin reverently.

"Take a look at this, friends," He then announced, his voice echoing in the huge chamber. "Even a mudblood can do a better job than you, my infamous Death Eaters. This will have consequences."

He smiled down at Hermione, who was still holding onto his hand like a lifeline. "We hereby grant you, Hermione Granger, the right to appear in Our presence whenever you deem it necessary. We grant you the right to apparate into Our fortress at will. We grant you the right to occupy a chamber in Our fortress and to send Us messages directly, not via other members of the Inner Circle. We also grant you the right to wear a mask during the Circle meetings."

Hermione trembled as his dark, tainted magic washed over her, leaving in her the ability and knowledge he had given to her.

"I thank you, my Lord," She whispered with a broken voice. "I know this honour is unheard of, and my only hope is that I will prove myself worthy of it!" She hesitated, her eyes darting across Voldemort's face before hastily concentrating on the ground again. "May I be so bold, my Lord, to request another generous gift from you during this night full of joy?"

She heard angry hissing behind her back, felt furious eyes resting on her bent back. The Inner Circle wasn't happy with her swift ascension among their ranks. She would pay for this, later. Not tonight, for tonight she was the Dark Lord's pet, and no one would dare hurt her. Time to play her cards to best advantage.

"A bold request indeed, my little mudblood," Voldemort answered, curiosity laced with amusement. "What is your wish?"

"I hope for the honour of a private word with you, my Lord."

A week ago, she would have been punished for this move beyond pain, and for a moment, she was sure to feel the Cruciatus rolling over her body. But it seemed that finally her strategy had worked out. Instead of cursing her, the Dark Lord chuckled in amusement.

"Granted," He agreed, and then, turning to his Death Eaters. "Out with you! The little mudblood wants to whisper her delicate secrets into my ears."

As the clicks of booted feet on cold stone echoed away. Hermione shuddered at the thought of how she would pay for this. She was glad if she survived the Purebloods' wrath.

"We are alone, pet," The Dark Lord told her, and the slithering, oily quality of his voice turned the words into an obscenity. "What do you wish to tell me that should remain hidden from the ears of my truest servants?"

"I…" She started, as if not sure how to phrase what she wanted to say. "That I fear not all of them are entirely true to you, my Lord…"

The power of his mind hit her with the strength of a storm, and she bent and trembled under his will like a sheet of corn, fixing all her mind on the images she had spun for him, fixing all her will on keeping secret what he mustn't see, while she let her eyes glaze over and her mind appear like a clouded, weak and girlish thing, not the polished steel of discipline she had turned it into.

Finally, the attack stopped and he retreated to the caves of his own mind. She knew that he believed her, at least partly, otherwise she would have been dead at his feet already. But still he wanted her to go on, to tell her story in her own words and spin her own conclusions. A slight lowering of his head informed her of it and she lowered her eyes again, delivering her story and trembling with fear and exhaustion.

"I found a secret passage this afternoon, my Lord," She told him, colouring her words with haste and the eagerness to please. "It ends in the staff room, and thus I was able to overhear a short conversation between Snape the traitor and McGonagall. They talked about the failed attack, and Snape said…" She hesitated, changing the haste into worry. "He said…"

"You may be plain with me, child. There are few things that can surprise me and you won't be punished for information."

"He said that their agreement with their new informants had worked excellently, and that Lupin would have never made it in time had they not be informed from inside…"

"I see," Voldemort's words were colder than snow and ice. "There is more, isn't there?"

"I have placed a listening spell on the corridor near Snape's quarters weeks ago, my Lord. He hasn't received any visitors, but he leaves the castle more often than he did before. I didn't dare follow him without orders from you, my Lord, but I saw him walk down towards Hogsmeade several times now…"

"So you think he is meeting there with this… informant, little mudblood?"

She nodded, worry and hesitation again stiffening her whole body. This was the crucial moment, the time when he would either punish her for overstepping the limits, or raising her to new heights with a mission, a task that would induce fear even among the Death Eaters of the Inner Circle…

"What do you wish to do about this then, Hermione?"

"I would like to follow the traitor down to Hogsmeade, my Lord," She whispered. "To find out who it is that betrays you and to bring his name to you, for the glory of your kingdom and the downfall of our enemies."

Long was his silence, long and cold, and she had nearly given up hope when something touched her head. The coldness that seeped through her hair to her skin told her that it was his hand, the serpent like claw of the Dark Lord, resting on her like the proud hand of a father.

"Then you should fulfill your wishes, my child. Go, find those in our midst that are not worthy. Make me proud."

She shivered.

Only when she had left the throne room an hour later, surprisingly unscathed as the Dark Lord had demonstrated his satisfaction with her openly, did she allow herself to relax a little. But not for long, and not entirely, for she would not be safe until she had reached Severus' chambers, and her work for tonight wasn't finished yet.

Hermione had yet another prey to hunt down, and she met him in the room cleared for apparition. They were alone.

"MacNair," She purred. "It must be more than a coincidence that we meet here."

Indeed it was, for she had timed her exit carefully to meet him here. But MacNair didn't need to know that.

"Granger," He answered. "Risen in the Dark Lord's favour, it seems."

She shrugged. "Some rise, some fall," She commented, then met his eyes again and slowly, sensually, licked her lips. "But you know that it has nothing to do with real worth, MacNair. I must say that I was… impressed… by your inventiveness over the last weeks."

"I have no idea what you are talking about," He answered, face blank.

"You don't?" She shrugged again. "I'm surprised. That Hufflepuff boy you blackmailed, the assault on Potter, Fudge, and now your close friend Atricus, working together with Nott junior… you have wormed your way into the castle, MacNair, like a true Slytherin. I am… intrigued."

"So what," He answered, crossing his arms before his body defensively, but his eyes were glued on her body and face. She moved forward so that he would have a good view of her breasts and slowly ran a finger down the curve of her belly and hip.

"Lucius has become lazy, and decadent," She said, lowering her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. "It may be that I am searching for a new partner. Someone with greater… determination and vigour. Someone to… satisfy all my needs…"

She pursed her lips and pouted, turning half away from him and playing with her hair. The fool didn't even notice how she was manipulating him. "But if you're not interested…"

"Maybe I am," He answered, too quickly, with a voice rough from desire and excitement.

She smiled at him, her mouth a dark, wet cave that opened tantalizingly slow.

""I like bold men, MacNair. Strong men. Men who do not hesitate to take what they want."

She took a step closer towards him and saw a shiny layer of sweat building on his forehead.

"Meet me tomorrow night at the place where we had our last… bodily confrontation," She licked her lips again and focused her eyes on his crotch.

"But, Lucius…"

"Are you afraid to take what you want, MacNair?" She asked and stepped even closer, until her hip contacted with his. "Or do you not want me?"

He gulped, unable to answer, but she didn't need him to voice the words.

"Tomorrow," She whispered. "Nine o'clock. I will be waiting for you, MacNair. Don't disappoint me…"

And with that, she apparated back to Hogwarts, leaving behind a MacNair that was torn between desire and fear.

He would come. She was very sure of that.

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"It was frightening," Harry told Draco the next afternoon as they met for one of their regular lessons. "One moment she was just Hermione, the next she looked like a professional killer. She slaughtered them, Draco. As if they were meat. Oh, damn it…"

The book he had been carrying around the room on his head had finally given up its fight against gravity and toppled to the ground.

Harry felt very tempted to give it a good, hard kick, but when he saw Draco's mocking expression, one eyebrow raised, awaiting the explosion, he reigned in his temper, and, without a word, took up the book again.

"I remember when I first saw my father that way," Draco said, his voice taking on the bitter edge it always sported when he talked about his parents. "I was seven. We had visited Knockturn Alley that afternoon, to meet one of his contacts. We had reached an abandoned alley, when suddenly he whirled around, wand in hand, and threw the Killing Curse at a woman who was walking behind us. She died on the spot."

Draco shuddered, his eyes fixed on a distant time. "He was so cold about it. He didn't seem to care one bit, and when I cried, he was very angry with me. Today I wonder why I went on admiring and adoring him like I did. It seems so very clear in retrospection that he was a heartless bastard."

"That's a parent thing, I guess," Harry answered, turned his head too fast and had to grab the falling book. At least it didn't hit the ground this time. "I couldn't imagine my parents anything but perfect, either. It was a rather nasty shock when I found out they were quite the opposite. At least my father was."

He shrugged the thought away. "Anyway, Hermione wasn't completely heartless, at least not after the others were gone."

He proceeded to tell Draco everything about the scene he had witnessed afterwards, including, only shortly hesitating, what had happened after Snape had left them.

For a moment, he wondered why he trusted Draco with any of this. He wouldn't have told it to Ron, not even during their best times of friendship, or to anybody else in Hogwarts. Mainly because he was a Slytherin, Harry decided then, and as such inclined to understand his Head of House better by definition than anybody else could ever hope to. And because he was Hermione's friend.

It had nothing to do with the bond that had formed between them over the last weeks, or the fact that he sought out Draco's opinion and thoughts more often than he had ever done with anybody else, safe Hermione perhaps. He wasn't friend with a Slytherin.

"Severus and Hermione… That doesn't surprise me," Draco answered after a moment of silence. "Not really. I've seen how they behave around each other in private a few times, and there was always such…"

"Tenderness," Harry added, half in thoughts. "And intimacy. And care."

He thought of how Hermione had sent him forwards to rejoin the others while she set of in a different direction. When he had asked her what she was up to, she had simply grinned. "Ask Severus," She had told him.

But asking him wasn't necessary. As soon as Harry had reached the others, Neville, Luna and Ginny huddled together in a little group of misery while the Professors guarded the corpses and conversed in hushed tones, Snape had descended on them, presenting them with a simple yet believable explanation for the events that mentioned nothing of Hermione, the Order or apparition jewels of any kind.

They _had_ followed Ron (Hermione being somewhere else entirely), and somehow – they weren't sure how – Remus had found out and headed after them, alerting the rest of the teachers. He had killed the Death Eaters and waited at the edge of the wards for the other Professors to arrive.

Nice and simple. Simple enough, Snape had said, for even them to stick to it, and he had had them repeat the story, every single one of them, adding in a gentle voice that he would rip their tongues out and use them as potions ingredients if they didn't stick to this exactly. Harry had seen Neville go deadly pale, and even he himself had believed the Spymaster for a moment.

Then, they had entered through the grand entrance door, and Hermione had stormed towards them, nearly collapsing him in her eagerness to embrace him. She had cried, and babbled, and admonished, and cried some more, and Snape had hissed at her what an infantile behaviour she was showing, and she had tried to put herself together but had failed miserably, and Snape had uttered some terribly stinging remark about how books really couldn't teach you the important things in life.

Harry knew that he would have been angry, or irritated before, but not now. Not after he had seen them together like that. Now he knew that Snape was just staging a show to keep her safe, an elaborated tale of disgust and hate he wove around her to secure her from as much danger as possible.

Every hateful word, every reaction he produced in her was just proof of how much he cared for her. Demonstrated in the only way he could, before so many people. It was an impressive show, and Harry found that it calmed him to know how much strength Snape was willing to pour into her belittlement.

Neville, Luna and Ginny had stood by, very wide eyed, and had watched a Hermione that was so completely changed they couldn't understand it. Only the memory of Snape's velvety words kept them silent, Harry could see it in their faces.

And then Dumbledore's office, the Fidelius and the triggered Obliviate, and a hasty inclusion of the three into the Outer Circle of the Order, forcing them to remain quiet about all this by raising them to unexpected heights.

Simple and ingenious. He would never have imagined it.

Sometimes he wondered if all this interaction with Slytherins would be driving him mad soon. His brain felt like an intricate knot of meanings, hidden meanings and meanings below that. How could anyone consider so many perspectives and angles at the same time and remain sane? He was glad he was a Gryffindor.

"Yes, that's the right description, I guess," Draco agreed, not knowing about the direction Harry's thoughts had taken. "There was always such tenderness between them that I wondered… At first I thought it would disturb me, but in a way, it seems only logical, doesn't it?"

"The two brightest minds of Hogwarts joined together, you mean?" Harry grinned. "I must admit that two months ago I would have retched at the thought. It is hard to believe even now."

"Especially when you think of how he treats her in class."

"That's nothing compared to how he treats her during Order meetings," Harry answered, amusing himself with the memory for a moment. "Mrs Weasley has given him three tongue lashings already for reducing the "poor girl" to tears."

Draco laughed, "Imagine Hermione crying about something like this. She's just like a Slytherin in that respect." There was pride in his voice, and Harry suddenly realized that the itch of anger he would have felt a week ago about those words didn't come. "It takes a lot to make us crack. Those who don't learn it at school learn it quickly afterwards. They all harden up. Like my father."

"You know, that really makes me feel better, you comparing her to your father all the time," Harry complained. "I was frightened enough as it was. What if all that turns her into… I don't know."

"Nonsense," Draco said, deep conviction in his voice. "She will never turn into something like my father. There's a huge difference!"

"What difference," Harry asked, giving his best not to sound too pleading.

"Once she snapped out of it, she cried her heart out," Draco answered simply. "My father only re-sheathed his wand and told me that scum spying on wizards didn't deserve to live," Draco shrugged. "Then he smiled and invited me to a huge ice cream."

"He must be a terrifying man."

"That he is."

"How did Hermione… get to know him?"

Draco's eyes narrowed as he turned around to Harry. He could see the hesitation in the Gryffindor's eyes, battling with the craving wish to know.

"Do you really want to know this?" Draco asked, not sure whether he wanted to tell, but Harry nodded after a moment, and Draco sighed.

"We had been friends for several months, meeting in the Room of Requirement and talking, mainly. I had decided to inform Dumbledore about my father's letters earlier that month. One morning Hermione sent me an urgent letter, telling me to meet her as soon as possible. Once we were in safety, she explained to me that she _had_ to get to know my father.

"I asked her why. And as if it was the most natural thing in the world, she answered: 'To become a Death Eater of course'."

Draco snorted. "You can imagine my reaction. It was loud, long drawn and slowly developed from laughter to outraged shouting. Anyway, she convinced me. You know how Hermione is when she really wants something."

Harry couldn't help but nod in commiseration.

"She began to tell me what I should write to my father – that she had started to talk to me and be friendlier to Slytherins in general, that I had found her in the restricted section, reading some book about forbidden curses, that she seemed less interested in lessons and would sometimes stare at Dumbledore with hateful eyes. My father had asked me to inform him about everything concerning the Golden Trio – you – from early on. So when I started telling him these things, he was intrigued. But he wouldn't have made any move. Despite all appearance, my father is a very careful man.

"Then there was the spring ball, housed in the manor of a Death Eater who had still kept his identity hidden and was thus safe from prosecution. I was to attend, as every year, and Hermione announced that she would accompany me."

Draco snorted again. "And accompany me she did. The transformation for the Yule Ball in Fourth Year was nothing against it, believe me. She was the best looking woman at the ball, a mudblood, and behaving as if the whole place belonged to her. People were shocked. They were disgusted. My father was fascinated."

He sighed, brushing invisible specks of dust from his school robes. "They vanished into a room and stayed there for hours. When she returned, she was obviously bruised, but she seemed to have gotten what she wanted. One month later, she was introduced to the Dark Lord. End of story."

Silence grew between them as Draco waited for Harry's reaction, his mind still toying with the events of last spring, and Harry struggled with something he knew not how to phrase. It had been occupying his mind for a week now, and still he wasn't sure how Draco would react. Careful planning would be necessary to convince him… Oh, what the heck, he wasn't a Gryffindor for nothing. Plunge into cold water, then it will appear warm soon.

"I want you in the Order's Inner Circle, Draco," He simply said, and was rewarded with a priceless expression on the Slytherin's face. Draco looked so dumbfounded, so completely stupid as he choked out a strangled "What?" that Harry barely managed to suppress his smile.

But smiling would be interpreted as condescension, he knew that by now. "I want you in the Order," He repeated. "You have been handing in valuable information for more than a year now. Remus, Professor Dumbledore and Snape will support you. And I know that Hermione would be glad to have you there. I would be glad."

In the few seconds Harry had needed to say this, Draco's face had closed down completely, like a room whose curtains were suddenly drawn, to cut off all light and warmth.

„It wouldn't work, Potter," Draco replied lightly, and only because Harry had practiced reading the Slytherin over the last week did he notice bitterness in his voice. „They would never accept me. I'm a Slytherin, son of a Death Eater, model to every mudblood hater in this school. Even if you could use your influence to get me into the Order, they would never trust me enough to lower their guard around me. They would only believe I'd be trying to – how would Weasley put it? – _ferret them out_."

Harry chose to ignore the fact that he would have thought the same about Draco not a month ago. _What a long way I have come in so short a time_, he realized suddenly. It felt as if he had been half blind for many years, seeing only the obvious and ignoring that what he saw was nothing more but the thin surface of a chaotic entanglement of motives, intentions and relationships.

It had been Hermione who had brought him to reconsider his perspective, to find out about all this, Hermione and her peculiar relationship to Snape that seemed to become more mysterious every day. But it had been Draco who had helped him along the way. Now he could help Draco.

"They didn't trust Snape in the beginning, either. And I don't want to know how they will react when they find out the true identity of their beloved master spy," He shrugged again. "But that's not important. The point is: I want you in," He grinned. "And I'm not the Boy Who Lived for nothing, you know?"

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Leaning against the rough bark of a tree, Hermione heard the soft plop of apparition, but she didn't move an inch. She just kept her position, eyes downcast, one leg raised and resting against the tree, exposing bare skin and the skirt of her school uniform. She had braided her hair and put on just a wisp of make-up.

She knew how she looked: innocent, slightly helpless, and very young. It wouldn't do to remind MacNair of the wild huntress he had last met at this spot.

"MacNair," She called out after a moment, as if she hadn't noticed his arrival immediately. Her voice was shivering slightly, as if she was freezing, or afraid of the dark. "I was afraid you wouldn't come!"

She had overwhelmed him yesterday, in the chamber. But men like him didn't like it when the woman took control and kept it. She would have to appear soft and vulnerable tonight, leaving him the initiative.

He wanted his women passive, and passive she would be, this one evening, leaving the work to the dark figure in the shadows.

"Of course I came, sweetie," He answered, walking over towards her, and Hermione had to suppress a snort of amusement. Sweetie indeed. He sounded like some muggle on his first date.

She felt an arm snaking around her waist, pulling her close to him, and repressed the shudder it caused automatically. She was too used to this by now to let it disturb her.

"So where do you want us to go? Anything planned?" He whispered in her ear.

She turned towards him until their faces were mere inches from each other. Her warm, sweet breath tickled his mouth and nose. "I know a cave nearby," She whispered. "I thought we could be… undisturbed there."

"Sounds great," He agreed and his hand, which had rested on her hip, slowly moved lower. She leaned into his touch for a moment, then moved away again.

"Someone could see me," She whispered apologetically, making her voice a little breathless to show him she wanted his hands on her. "We can't risk it so near the castle."

"Lead the way, then," He agreed, withdrawing his hand from her butt, but keeping very near her. If he didn't stop fingering her soon, Severus would have to execute plan B.

She let MacNair do the talking while they walked. Mainly, he bragged about his plans to get Potter out of the castle and rise to the favour of the Dark Lord. She listened closely, siphoning of every useful piece of information and commenting on his bravery with impressed outcries and admiring sighs. The thickness of these pureblood men surprised her without end.

They had nearly reached the cave where Snuffles had been hiding so long ago, when suddenly, from the left, a beam of cold white light erupted into the darkness and hit her full range in the back.

She cried out in pain and collapsed, half drawing down MacNair with her and thus handicapping his wand arm. Plan B had started. Of course the light had produced nothing but a slight heat in her back, but she rolled on the ground as if she was in dire pain anyway, and MacNair seemed to buy it.

At least he had some Death Eater reflexes, she thought as he freed his arm hastily and stepped away from her, to prepare for battle. But they weren't good enough to notice that she had disposed of his second wand. She liked the chances even.

"Who's there?" MacNair shouted nervously, his voice rough and on the breaking point. Probably thinking that Malfoy had found them out and was now waiting in the shrubbery to administer the Killing Curse.

But the figure that stepped from the shadows into the moonlight was not the silver blond head of the Malfoy family.

Black hair framed a face which looked dark and brooding with its thin mouth, chiselled nose and black, burning eyes, a blackness mirrored by a whirling cloak so that it looked as if the body was surrounded by a halo of darkness, an aura of negative light.

Even Hermione, who had known about his presence all along, felt her heart flutter in her chest like a tiny bird. Only Severus could stage such a melodramatic entrance and without looking ridiculous. In fact, he looked quite the opposite, and Hermione had to tell herself sternly to concentrate on the task ahead.

"MacNair," Severus purred, much like she had purred in the apparition room last night, and again, Hermione's heart performed an excited little jump. "What a pleasant surprise. It seems you haven't changed your behaviour. Raping students it is tonight?"

"Snape," MacNair hissed, and part of his fear seemed to transform into hatred towards the man who had betrayed them all. But only a part, for he knew Severus to be a formidable opponent, and he was on his guard now. "Still sneaking in the shadows and spying on people? Seems you haven't changed much, either."

He seemed to stand completely still, only a tiny twitch of his left arm betraying him – he had let his wand slip from the holster on his arm to his hand and was now ready to attack without further warning.

But it seemed that Severus wouldn't give him the chance.

A flick of his wand, and a blue light shot towards MacNair, who blocked it with a hastily conjured shield. And then, the fight began.

It was clear to everyone on the little clearing, only seconds after the first moves had been made, that MacNair didn't have a chance against Severus. Against the Potions Master's lightning fast curses and hexes, MacNair appeared clumsy and slow, and while Severus fired spell after spell, his opponent seemed fixed on Crucios and Killing Curses, causing Severus to leap, jump and roll out of the way more than use shields. Not that he had a problem with that.

But Severus was holding back. Instead of the deadly, dangerous curses every Death Eater could use in his sleep, he was concentrating on stunners and disarmers, attacking MacNair from all sides unsettling him and offering him a false sense of confidence at the same time.

"What, Snape, are you down to first year curses? Did your new master put you on a short leash?" MacNair mocked, and Hermione was once more surprised by just how stupid MacNair was. For who would tease a panther playing with his prey?

"He isn't my new master, MacNair," Snape answered, dark amusement tainting his voice. "I have been secretly serving him for eighteen years now, and none of you would-be heroes ever noticed."

"NO," MacNair shouted, his wrath taking out the last portion of his brain that had warned him about overconfidence before, and rushed towards Severus.

He met a fist that drove the breath from his lungs, and while he was still trying to understand what had just happened to him, Severus, who had leapt behind him, delivered a kick to his shoulder that sent him to the ground.

With a movement so cocky that Hermione couldn't suppress a chuckle, Severus straightened his robes.

"Petrificul Totalus," He said lazily, and the body of the fallen Death Eater stiffened. "Now really, Hermione," He then continued while uprighting MacNair with quick gestures of his wand and cleaning his face and robes as efficiently. "I can't help but question your choice of companions."

Hermione pouted. She was enjoying all this enormously. "What else should I do when you are hiding in the bushes from me, Severus," She replied, and was rewarded with the shocked face of MacNair, the face of a man who suddenly, but too late, understood that he had been set up completely. And that this might very likely be his end.

"Well, if you put it that way I can see your point," Severus now said. "Perhaps we should start anew, then. More friendly perhaps. Are you ready?"

Hermione nodded and retreated to the shadows where Snape had hidden earlier the evening.

"Good view?" The Spymaster called over and she shouted and affirmative.

"Well then, MacNair, you are to help us then with a little thing. It won't take too long, I assure you. Imperio," He hissed, and MacNair's body slackened like a puppet on strings.

He walked back a few steps, until he had merged with the darkness. Then, he returned, an eager smile on his face.

"I'm glad you came, Snape," He said.

"What do you want?" The velvety voice of the Potions Master and traitor was expressionless, and MacNair squinted in the dark to get a glimpse of his face. Not that it would have told him anything, either.

"I have information valuable for your side," MacNair spoke hastily, intent on pleasing. "I am willing to turn them over, as well as myself. I know of the Dark Lord's movements and plans. Only get me away of the Death Eaters! Let me work for Dumbledore!"

"Is that all?" The cold question rang through the night.

"There are others like me, others who want out," MacNair babbled, his face white with fear. "I can give you their names, many names, if only…"

"That is not good enough, MacNair," Severus interrupted him. "I know you. You are weak. You will betray us again. There's only one turncoat among the ranks of Dumbledore, and that's me. _Avada Kedavra_."

Green light filled the air and MacNairs body, lifeless, toppled to the ground. Quickly, Severus crossed the distance between himself and the corpse and committed a thorough search of MacNair's body, pocketing his wand and a roll of parchment. Then he sent a last, critical glance around the clearing, touched his head as if saluting his victim, and apparated away.

It took Hermione less than five minutes to connect the images of MacNair's death with other snippets she and Severus had recorded earlier. When she was finished, she had a perfect memory of following him out of the castle, through Hogsmeade and to the forest until he met MacNair and killed him. Something worthy to present to a Master Occlument.

Then, she brushed her skirt clean of dirt and dried it with a spell. She approached MacNair, and, with a charm she had found in the restricted section, removed all traces of her scent and touch from his body and clothes. Only when she was absolutely sure that nothing of Hermione Granger remained on the corpse did she grab his arm and apparated away.

She had a gift for the Dark Lord and his Inner Circle, something that would hopefully unleash chaos among the higher ranks of the Death Eater.

Something that would increase her power greatly.

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**A/N**: There it is, I hope you liked it! I will work through all the questions and comments given in the reviews during the next days and post my answers in the "future" category of my forum. Hopefully, you will also find a preview to the next chapter there somewhere during the week. So keep checking! And review!


	39. Trust And Betrayal

A/N: Right! Sorry about the delay, but something came up. This something, aka a spontaneous vacation, also means that I won't have access to the internet for about a week. So don't worry if I do not answer questions or appear in the forum. I will post a preview as soon as I can and update not much later. Promise! 

And now, finally, the thing we've all been waiting for – her true motif...

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**Trust And Betrayal**

A knock raised her the next morning from her Charms essay.

She had slept in Severus's chambers, but returned early this morning to her Head Girl room. Weekends were the likeliest time for a student to approach the Head Girl with problems, and although she barely considered herself a student these days, not to talk of as the Head Girl, it was a role she had to play perfectly to keep suspicion away from her and the Order.

Suspicions… Her mind returned to the events of the last night while she automatically checked her wards and listening charms for breaches. If anybody not so friendly was in front of her door, she wanted to know before she opened it.

She had rather surprised Voldemort's guards last night when she had raced past them with the body of MacNair floating behind her. She had been wearing neither the customary black cloak nor the newly granted mask, and her cheeks had been flushed with shock and the effort to inform her Master as quickly as possible.

She had presented the corpse and her memories as evidence that her suspicions had been confirmed. When the Dark Lord had finished his examination, silence had fallen on the congregation of Death Eaters, and when his wrath had been unleashed on all of them, it had been terrible.

She had escaped relatively unscathed, but the eyes of her fellow Death Eaters had promised nothing good. Still, the evening had been a success. Voldemort now considered her as the only one he could trust absolutely among his followers. She alone had unearthed this conspiracy and possessed the courage to inform him. She alone was loyal to him.

In a way, it was terribly funny. And it had rendered most of the Inner Circle useless for the next two days, for Voldemort had shown them how little they had pleased him, and Hermione had been forced to watch.

Preferring not to remember that particular part of her evening, she quickly rose and walked over to the door connecting her chambers to the Gryffindor common room. Ginny's nervous face greeted her when she opened it. The common room behind her was empty.

"Hi," The redhead said. "I… that is… I wanted to ask if you would like to spend some time at Hogsmeade with me… it's a Hogsmeade Saturday, you know, and I thought you might need some free time…"

Yes, she needed free time. In fact, Hermione couldn't really remember when she had last walked to Hogsmeade, but there was so much to do. Severus and she had talked strategy till late in the night, only interrupted by a short visit from McGonagall, who would take care of Justin and his parents, and they had another meeting scheduled for this evening. He wanted to go over his plans for the Order with her, and Draco wanted to discuss a way to plant false information into his letters to his father, and then there was homework to do…

But there was a strange look on Ginny's face, a mixture of nervousness and determination.

"Why would you want me to go with you?" She asked, having learned long ago that bluntness was the only way to obtain information from Ginny. "Your brother can't even stand to be in one room with me."

Ginny blushed. "He's such a prat," She said quietly. "Listen, Hermione, if we had known what your fight was about, we never would have cornered you like we did. I realized how stupid we were. Dumbledore and Snape explained everything to us, and I can't believe Ron's still treating you like that!"

"Most people would be, I guess," Hermione answered, not bothering to hide how tired she felt. "Neville nearly faints every time he looks at me. Remus Lupin doesn't ask me for demonstrations in class anymore, and Luna has stopped talking in my presence completely. She just stares at me as if I were a crumpsnargled Io or whatever. And who should blame them? I'm not the person they thought I was. In a way, I did betray them."

"That's bullshit," Ginny answered calmly. "But I know that it feels that way for you, sometimes."

"How so?" Hermione leaned forward with sudden interest. She had thought this was just one of those Weasley-gestures, a friendly attempt to overcome ones own prejudices that was doomed from the very start. But she often forgot that Ginny was, in a way, very different from her brothers, and even from her mother.

"Because it felt the same for me," Ginny said, her voice and posture tense. "Back after Riddle possessed me. I knew that I didn't have a choice, and everybody else knew it, too. Theoretically. Still, they were tiptoeing around me all summer, driving me mad and controlling my every move. And the only thing I wanted was someone who didn't pretend I wasn't changed. Like you did, when we were back at school," Ginny grinned. "Well, you drove me mad with your questioning, but at least I had someone to talk to who wouldn't break into tears the moment I mentioned it. So, would you like to go to Hogsmeade?"

Hermione opened her mouth, closed it again, and considered what she had just heard. She had always known Ginny was smarter than her brothers, but this had been quite impressive.

So she nodded. Slowly.

"Yes, Ginny," She said. "I'd love to go. Just wait a second while I fetch my cloak."

"I'll get mine, too," Ginny grinned. "Be back in a minute!"

Hermione left the door open while she turned to her wardrobe and took out the warm cloak she wore outside. It would be a great day, she decided, and she would have fun.

She quickly tapped her Waterhouse poster to tell Severus where she had gone, and when she would return. They were working on a better way to communicate, but time had been cut short over the last weeks for everything except spy work and fighting. He had other things to do now than spending the evenings on the couch, reading and discussing.

Of course she understood it, she thought as she fastened her cloak and rummaged for her gloves, it was just that she missed him so terribly. Every hour without Severus brought things she wanted to tell him, things she hoped to discuss with him.

Every hour with him on the other hand made her feel content, and whole.

She felt a wisp of cold air for a second and turned around, wand in hand, checking the door and her listening spells, but there was nothing there, and she returned to the search of her gloves.

Perhaps it was that she could be herself with him, she wondered. She could be as quick and intelligent as she wanted without having to fear the usual irritated reactions. She could be weak, and he would catch her before she fell. Or she could be strong, and cold, and ruthless, without having to worry whether he would understand or whether he would act like a male idiot that had to feel superior.

He had played so many roles in his life, been so many things, that masks and acting were irrelevant in his presence. She had no choice but to tell him what she really thought, no chance to hide behind little lies and manipulations, something that made her happier than she ever could have imagined.

At the same time, it frightened her to death. For, mad as it sounded even to her ears, her lies were the only thing that made their relationship possible, the only stable basis for the absolute trust they had established. He must never know, or all would be over.

And she knew how easily it could end. Only her lies protected this partnership, only the thin barrier of steel she had erected between them, so subtle that he hadn't noticed up to now. But it was hard to hold onto her secrets, so hard, and it got harder every time he looked at her, every time he spoke to her with that unbelievable voice of velvet and warmth.

She had been tempted so many times by now to simply let go, to tell him everything about her true reasons for spying. His old question, the "why" he had asked her so many months before, ghosted through her mind every day now, and the need to finally answer grew and grew.

But she couldn't, for she knew him far too well by now. He wouldn't be able to live with the truth. It would wound him mortally, and whatever it was that had developed between them, this strange, wonderful thing that they called friendship, would end.

Perhaps, she thought in a moment of sad clarity, it was better this way. Better not to see each other so much, to keep him at a distance necessary for her deception to work. It hurt to even think that, but the alternative hurt even more. And Hermione Granger had always been one to stick to her decisions.

So she put on her red and gold Gryffindor scarf, walked out of her room and closed the door behind her.

Ginny was waiting for her in the Common Room, and she smiled with true happiness when she saw her. Perhaps it was good not to fix all her mind and being on Severus, Hermione thought while they left Gryffindor tower, talking animatedly all the time. Spending time with people of her age was definitely safer.

_Because they can't understand you as Severus does,_ a voice whispered in her mind, but she ignored it ruthlessly. Today, she would have fun.

When the two girls had reached the entrance hall, they were laughing already, and when they stepped out into the fresh spring air, Hermione was sure that this would be exactly the thing she needed. Ginny looked willing to agree.

Neither of them looked up to the window of Hermione's room, and so neither of them noticed the shadow that watched them from the safety of her curtains. His eyes followed their figures as they vanished in the direction of Hogsmeade, then stepped back into the room with a grim, dark smile.

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For the first time this week, Severus was sitting in his office adjoining the Potions classroom. He really had better things to concentrate on, he thought while slowly drinking his tea. There was still much to do until the Headquarters would even slightly resemble his idea of efficient working-space.

Whenever he became too cross, he would tell Albus that all this wasn't his, Severus', job, but the Headmaster's, and that he wouldn't move a finger in this lair of chaos from now on. But Albus, insufferable old man that he was, would just twinkle, and smile, and offer a lemon drop, and Severus would continue working before he realized what he was doing.

He was only glad that they had moved the Headquarters to Hogwarts. Grimmauld Place would have been completely unbearable.

As things were, his private life – something he had only recently developed – suffered a lot.

Remus still hadn't overcome his own stupidity and behaved around him as if he was a dangerous animal, which was a joke considering what he turned into every full moon.

He hadn't had tea with Minerva for more than a week, and then he could have spent some time with Hermione, of course, though he tended to cut their private time short over the last week, out of fear what too much contact would do to him.

Although his discipline wouldn't allow him to admit it, he missed her more than he had ever missed a human being. Her absence tore at him like a physical pain, and he had been badly tempted more than once to abandon this exercise in selfrestraint and prepare an early dinner for them in his chambers.

But it was tradition that the Head of Slytherin would be sitting in his office on Saturday afternoons for an hour or two, waiting for those of his house who might seek out help when nobody else would see them. Everyone knew it. Severus had been doing it for the last ten years. And he wasn't to break with a tradition just because he had better things to do.

This tradition was also the reason why he didn't appear surprised when he heard someone open the classroom door with rather more strength then necessary. Anger management was something all Slytherins learned early on, but sometimes it was just too much. He knew that feeling himself intimately.

But the slight curiosity he felt towards the identity of his visitor changed into massive irritation when something crashed into his office door.

"Come in," He called, not wanting to judge before he knew who was outside, but when the door was finally pushed open with enough power to let it bang against the wall, the student before him wasn't a Slytherin.

It was Ronald Weasley.

"It´s all your fault, you bastard!" The Gryffindor shouted, his face a dark red, contrasting rather painfully with his hair. He was cradling something in his arms, hidden from view under his cloak, and Severus eased his wand out of its holster. The boy was stupid enough to attack a teacher, and right now he seemed out of himself with wrath.

Well, Severus wouldn't mind teaching the brat a lesson. He had hurt Hermione.

"Mr Weasley, although I´m quite used to being the source of all your misery by now, would you kindly enlighten me what caused this outburst?" He asked in a lazy tone, knowing well enough that nothing provoked Gryffindors as surely as emotional coldness and arrogance.

"I found out why she started to spy, you son of a bitch," Ron howled, his face reddening even more. "And it's your fault!"

"Now really," Severus answered silkily. "If you want me to believe that Hermione supplied you with an information like that, I must disappoint you. I rather think she wouldn't trust you with the knowledge about next week's homework these days."

"I care about her more than you ever could, Snape," He snarled. "And she will soon realize who her real friends are. You have just driven her mad!"

"Yes well," Severus sneered. "If this is all you have to tell me, I must say that it lost its entertaining quality some time ago. Leave, or I will have you scrub cauldrons for the rest of the school year."

Suddenly, Weasley smiled. It was an expression so unexpected that Severus faltered, his sneer dying away. In some strange way, the brat suddenly looked older, more calculating. It was disconcerting to say the least.

"I don't think you want me to leave, Snape," He said. "You wouldn't wanna miss what I have here," And with an all too dramatic gesture, he flung back the cloak he had carried in his arms.

All colour drained from Severus' face, and he was around his desk before his brain caught up with the rest of body. "Where did you get that?" He shouted, but the words came out as a whisper.

"From her Head Girl room," Weasley answered, the mad smile still plastered on his face. "I broke into it when she left for Hogsmeade. She hid it well, but I'm not the youngest son of six for nothing, Snape."

Abruptly, Severus shook his head, his eyes still fixed on what Weasley's cloak had covered.

A pensieve.

"This can't be hers," He protested, relieved that his voice had returned to the steady silkiness he had cultivated for so many years. "She would never leave evidence in a room so badly secured. You are a bad liar, Weasley, and you should leave immediately. Bring the pensieve back to whoever you stole it from before I expell you from this school!"

"Oh no, you git, you are not threatening me!" Ron answered, still smiling madly. "And it _is _hers. Of course she could only hide it in her Head Girl's room – she couldn't risk it lying around where you could find it! Seems she didn't trust you as much as she pretended to, eh?"

Suddenly, the smile vanished, replaced by hatred so fierce that it burned every other emotion away from Weasley's face. "It's hers alright. And I've been in it, Snape. I know everything now, every little snippet she hid from you. You bastard!"

Something in his eyes told Snape that the boy wasn't lying. He couldn't be. A soft touch of Legilimency wiped the last bits of doubt away. Every word had been true, and with that knowledge, rage swept through Snape, taking away all control and consideration.

"Foolish boy!" He thundered. "How could you even consider violating her trust like this? She will never forgive you for it, and neither will I!"

"I violated nothing!" Weasley yelled. "It is you who touches her that way and behaves as if she were yours! If I try to help a friend, there's nothing wrong with it! And I will help her! Now that I know what drove her mad like this, it will be easy to show her what a greasy bastard you really are!"

"I don't know what you thought you saw, but you will give me the pensieve this instance and I will call the Headmaster down here! Just hope that he doesn't take too much time, or there might not be enough left of you to be expelled!"

"It hurts to find out she lied to you, doesn't it?" Weasley asked, the mad smile back on his face. "But it will hurt much more once you see what she hid!"

"You will hand the pensieve over immediately," Severus commanded, his voice a barely contained roar, and he advanced on Weasley.

"Catch it if you can!" And with that, Ronald Weasley hurled the stone basin at him with all the strength he possessed.

Snape did manage to catch it, if only barely. But he hadn't considered the nature of the basin's content, and though he cradled the pensieve safely against his chest, he couldn't stop the silver liquid from continuing the movement.

It hit him right in the face, and the moment he felt the cold wetness, he fell through mists and fog into the past.

The last thing he saw before the memories consumed him was Ronald Weasley's face, twisted in a grimace of hatred and amusement.

When the fog around him cleared, he found himself standing in Hogwarts' entrance hall, surrounded by darkness.

Severus wanted to draw back again, to leave the memory the moment his feet touched cold, smooth stone, but something forced him to remain.

_I will leave_, a voice roared in his mind, _I won´t betray her trust like that – not again_.

But pathetic as it was to be outwitted by that idiot Weasley, it had obviously happened. The liquid had spread over his face, not granting him the possibility to move away from it as he would from a pensieve. The contact between him and Hermione's memory couldn't be severed before it ended. And he was stuck.

The soft sound of steps made him whirl around. There she was, sneaking through the corridors of Hogwart's ground floor, probably on her way back from a late study session in the library.

Hermione. But not the Hermione he had come to know. This Hermione was younger, the Prefect badge on her chest not yet substituted by her Head Girl´s sign. Fifth or sixth year, then. Her hair was shorter and her posture less controlled, less graceful, more like that of a normal school girl. Only now that he saw her earlier self did Severus realize how much she had changed during the last year.

The most striking differences lay in her face, however. Gone were the lines of thought and sorrow that would slightly sharpen her features and make her look so much older. Her eyes lacked the glitter of knowledge and sarcasm, the light of bitter amusement about how predictable everything was. This girl hadn't yet understood what made the world turn, she hadn't looked into the eyes of the devil. She hadn't flirted with darkness and conquered it.

She was just an ordinary school girl, though brighter perhaps than the others. But not the polished diamond he had come to love.

Cursing himself, Severus suddenly realized that he had been standing there, in the middle of the entrance hall, transfixed for a seemingly endless time, watching Hermione in mute fascination without even trying to get out any more.

Again, he threw herself against the invisible barrier that had trapped him, only to be torn from his concentration when the memory-Hermione suddenly bent low, critically examining something on the smoothly polished sandstone in front of her.

Without a conscious movement, Severus was standing besides her, observing.

It was blood. Only a few drops, but there was no doubt about the nature of the substance, and from Hermione's face, suddenly tensed and nervous, he took it that she had recognized the red liquid as well.

But only when she moved forwards did he realize that it was, indeed, more than just a few drops. It was a trail, and she seemed determined to follow it.

"Don´t be stupid, girl", he hissed, knowing well enough that she couldn´t possibly hear him, "This castle is dangerous at night, have you learned nothing over the years?"

The thoughtful expression in her face as she looked up once more, her eyes flickering from the foot of the stairs to the trail of blood, told him that she was pondering the same thoughts. But obviously, these had been less fearful times, or times when Hermione hadn´t yet learned about the fathomless depth of danger that waited even at Hogwarts.

Instead of turning on her heel and informing a teacher, Hermione followed the trail.

And Severus, no longer even trying to resist the pull of the memory, found himself following her.

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Harry had curled up in his favourite armchair in front of the huge fireplace, enjoying the quiet of the Common Room on a Hogsmeade day, when the portrait hole opened. He looked up to see Ron climbing in, his face fixed on the ground, his movements clumsy and nervous.

Harry sighed silently and wanted to turn back to the fire when an inner voice told him that something wasn't right. Whether it was the lessons in body language Draco had drilled into him over the past week or his own knowledge of Ron's usual behaviour and moods that caused this strange knowledge Harry couldn't tell, but he decided that listening to his guts had always been a wise course of action and sat up straighter, chancing a good look at Ron.

His former mate didn't even seem to notice that he was now the object of a critical examination. He was pacing the Common Room, mumbling to himself, his shoulders twitching in a strange pattern Harry couldn't name.

Suddenly, Harry was worried, for, whatever the reason, Ron was clearly agitated far beyond even his normal emotional chaos.

"Ron?" He asked, rising from his armchair and slowly walking towards him. He was ready to retreat the instance Ron would show any sign of noticing him, but the other Gryffindor simply continued pacing, his back to Harry, his shoulders still twitching wildly.

"Ron, what's the matter with you? Something with your family? Ron?"

Slowly, Harry reached out and laid his hand on Ron's shoulder. The moment the redhead felt the contact however, he whirled around, and Harry, shocked both by the sudden movement and the sight before him, staggered backwards.

Ron's face was tearstained, his eyes red and swollen, but his lips were curled upwards to form a wild grin, the caricature of the easy smile his friend had used to wear. He looked like a madman to Harry, like one of those lunatics they were often using as villains in the comics his cousin read.

"Ron…" He whispered. "What happened?"

Only now did Ron seem to recognize him.

"Harry," He cried out, his smile growing even wider until it looked like his face was split in half. "No needs to worry, mate, I solved it all! She will come back to us soon enough, and the bastard will never touch her again."

"Just relax Ron," Harry said, trying to remember how Hermione had used to calm him down after some of his visions. "Everything's going to be alright."

"Yes," Ron yelled happily and grabbed Harry's shoulders hard. "Yes, exactly! Everything is going to be alright. He's paying right now for it, the greasy Slytherin."

Harry froze. "What are you talking about, Ron," He asked slowly, trying to push back the cloud of panic that threatened to envelop him. "What did you do?"

"I figured it all out!" Ron yelled. "I used your invisibility cloak when Ginny stood in her door, and I got her pensieve, see, and it told me everything I had to know. He will never touch her again, that old Death Eater!"

With fingers too cold for the atmosphere of the room, Harry pried Ron's hands loose from his shoulders. Now it was him who grabbed his friend, forcing him to meet his eyes.

"Ron," He said, his voice cold, showing nothing of the overwhelming fear he felt. "What the fuck have you done?"

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Down the stairs they went, the young prefect and her teacher, down into the dungeons, and the trail of blood grew wider, drops of read replaced by splashes as the stone grew wet and slimy and the torches along the walls became fewer and fewer.

Listening to her hitched, uneven breathing, Severus realized that Hermione, his fearless Hermione, was frightened. But no, this face didn´t belong to his Hermione, it were the features of a younger, more innocent girl that bore as much resemblance to the present day woman as a tree in its spring to his fully grown elder in all its leafy splendour.

When, by the way, had he started calling her "his Hermione"?

After a time that felt like an eternity to Severus, Hermione finally stopped. He had been so deep in thought that he hadn't noticed the way they had come, nor did he recognize the door that had stopped her. Only when Hermione careful opened it and entered the silent and dark room did he realize where they were.

And the realization hit him full force.

"No," He whispered, panic flooding his system and freezing him to the spot.

He hadn't been the youngest Potions Master and Hogwarts Professor in a century for nothing. He had a formidable mind, able to analyze every hint and riddle, and the moment he recognized the Potions classroom, everything fell into place.

"No, please let it be wrong! This can't be real! Turn around, Hermione, turn around this instance!"

Her adamant determination to withhold her motives for turning spy, her betrayal of his position with Voldemort, her open enmity towards him. Her nervousness in his presence those first, terrible weeks of withdrawal. Her mental barriers of fake images and the single, dimly lit picture he had seen only a second before he had been hurled out of her mind.

_The silhouette of a man, crouching on the floor in darkness, a frightened face, white from the blood loss, and a voice, shaking with fear…_

That very same picture here, now, in the nearly deserted potions room in the middle of the night. His own silhouette as he lay on the floor of his classroom, too weak to cross the short distance to his office door, completely helpless, half unconscious and mad with fear.

"Who's there?" He heard himself shout in the hoarse, panicked voice of someone expecting his death. "Who's…"

He could remember that night. The Dark Lord had nearly killed him, and he hadn't known afterwards how he had reached his chambers the next morning. Couldn't remember anything but the hazy dream of a white face and soft hands that wiped the blood from his face…

He had mistaken her for a dream, and never thought about it again.

And now this vague memory turned out to be the undoing of a girl half his age. If only he had crawled the few meters, if only he been gone when she had arrived, his office door safely closed to her inquiries…

"Turn around and forget all about this!" He pleaded again, his voice breaking with the shock and pain, even though he knew she couldn't hear him. "Just ignore me, I have managed before! Leave this place!"

But this had happened already, and Hermione hadn't turned around, she was crouching down besides the fallen figure, her hair spreading over both of them like a silken curtain.

"No!"

Instead of leaving, she turned the silent figure on his back, exposing a face devoid of all colour, black hair matted in his own blood.

"Oh my God, Professor, what happened to you?"

She raised her head now, her eyes wide and frightened as she tried to scan the darkness around them. He could read her well enough by now to know exactly what she thought. He had been hurt, and was helpless, and had to get into the safety of his chambers where no one would find him. He needed her help.

"Gods, Hermione, how often have I told you not to care so much about other persons?" He shouted, his voice snapping. "How often have I warned you that it makes you vulnerable?"

But he remembered how she had always given him that strange, sad little look when he had delivered that speech, how she had asked one day if he meant for her to turn her care into an active force instead of a passive worry, and the irony made him cry out in pain and frustration.

This hadn't been a new lesson to her. She had already learned it before. Here, in the darkness of the dungeons with the fallen figure of her Professor by her side.

"Professor, do you hear me?" Tentatively, the younger Hermione reached out for his counterpart's face and was rewarded with a wild, panicked fist that connected with her face and sent her sprawling backwards, crying out in shocked pain.

"Ouch… that hurt, Professor!"

But pain had never caused her to turn back, not this time, and not the countless times afterwards, when she had risked her life to protect him.

So she crawled back to his side, careful to evade his flaying arms, and after a moment of helpless staring, softly brushed the hair back from his face. It was a school girl's touch, shy and a bit clumsy.

She was well aware that she was overstepping countless limits right now, that he was a teacher she had no business touching. But he was also a man needy of soothing and warmth, and Snape's cheeks burned with shame when he saw his memory self lean into her touch greedily.

The fallen figure moaned in pain when her hand brushed past a bleeding wound on his cheek, and she soothed him with a soft stroke of her thumb.

"It's alright, Professor. Everything will be alright. I'm going to get help. Professor Dumbledore should…"

"No!" His younger counterpart shouted in pain, his eyes suddenly impossible white with panic. "Not Dumbledore…please…don't need…"

"But you need help, Professor! You are badly wounded, and I don't know enough about these things to…"

"Please…"

Helplessness lay in her voice and was mirrored in her face. She wasn't prepared for this, and she hadn't yet learned to think coolly and calmly in the middle of chaos. It was a treat only his Hermione had developed, and only after she had went through fire and flame. Because of him.

"What do you want me to do then, Professor? I can't let you lie on the floor like this…"

"My… chambers…"

"Oh, of course. Here, let me move you carefully…"

Numbly, he watched her float his body up into the air and break the passworded lock on his office door with one of her ingenious little spells.

He followed her into his fake chambers and heard her cry of astonishment without the slightest satisfaction. Of course she hadn't reacted to these chambers when he had shown them to her. She had already been in here before. Only his real chambers had surprised her.

She had already fallen deeper into the darkness of his heart than he could have ever imagined.

"Professor," She called out softly now, carefully placing him on the couch and lightening his chambers with a flick of her wand. "Professor Snape, what can I do to help you? Are there any potions you need to take?"

One twitching arm rose slowly, a twitching finger pointing towards a small cabinet above the barren fireplace. With hasty movements she walked over and ripped its doors open, revealing a line of small vials.

She was breathing heavily and Severus could see that she was standing on the edge of a panic now.

"This is madness," She was whispering to herself as trembling hands selected vial after vial. "What am I even doing here? I should get a teacher, or Madame Pomfrey, for goodness sake!"

Severus urged this idea on, but she had already turned back to his bleeding, twitching body, a venerable collection of potions in her arms.

She knelt down by his side and examined her finds critically. Only a slight widening of her eyes told Severus that she had recognized what was sitting in her lap. Silently, she administered a blood replenishing potion and one against the cramps, a Calming Draught that would have been sufficient for an elephant. Only when her hands had grasped the last vial did she hesitate.

"This is a really strong potion, Professor," She whispered, her hands shaking. "Are you sure you have to take it?"

Invisible but by her side, Severus couldn't suppress a snort. So she had always possessed that talent for understatements. Really strong didn't fit this Healing Potion at all. Get better or die was a far more apt description. He had taught the sixth years about it, adding in his most memorable voice that they were only to take it in the direst of emergencies, and only once in the course of a year. Otherwise, the consequences might be fatal in the truest sense of the word.

Of course he hadn't added that he himself was using it on a regular basis.

"Professor?" His memory-self hadn't answered her, and so, stubborn Gryffindor that she was, she tried it again. "Do you really have to take this?"

A shaky nod was the only reaction she got. She sighed, her fingers caressing the smooth vial. Then, with only the tiniest hesitation, she uncorked it and held it to his lips.

"I really hope this was the right decision," She whispered to herself. "Killing my Professor wouldn't look to good on the CV."

Severus snorted again, but his amusement was cut short when Hermione began to carefully cut his robe away from his body.

"What the hell…" He protested, interrupted by her sudden hiss. She had touched his right leg, and her hand came up bloody.

She used her wand to cut his trouser leg in two, her movements efficient though the panicky look in her eyes had even increased. So this was the emergency Granger, the girl that had followed her friends into one harebrained situation after the other, knowing fully well how dangerous it all was.

In contrast to her friends, who had been blessed with an unending hoard of ignorance, Hermione had always known what she was doing. She knew it now as well. She was hopelessly overtaxed with this, he could see it in her face, her body, in all those little gestures he knew too well by now. And still she would go through with this.

"Right," She whispered, having freed his leg from the black cloth and revealed a deep, angry wound. "Madame Pomfrey showed me how to do this, didn't she? Oh, I can't believe I'm stupid enough to do this! This is Professor Snape's leg, for goodness sake… Don't think about it, Hermione. Just imagine this is a test…"

Severus found it hard to imagine a test that would require circumstances like these, but the idea actually seemed to help.

"I am going to heal your leg now, Professor," She announced, her voice only barely betraying the apprehension she felt. "I hope it won't hurt, but I'm rather new to this… Are you sure you don't want me to get help?"

He twitched, but obviously she decided to interpret it in his favour and let it count as a nod.

Despite her fear, she performed the spell up to her usual standards. She then proceeded to clean the wound, his face and hands, and even aimed a general diagnosis spell at the rest of his body, though she didn't have the guts to unclothe him further. Severus was glad she didn't.

Once she had examined the results of her spell, something in her face changed. It took him a moment to realize that her panic had turned into outright fury, an anger so fierce he had seldom seen it with her.

"Gods! What the hell was Dumbledore thinking to let you do this without any assistance? You could have died tonight!"

Severus wanted to disagree. This was hardly the worst situation he had been in, and he had definitely managed on his own before. But she wouldn't like that as an answer for sure. The way her face darkened told him that her thoughts were racing along the same lines, wondering how often he had been hurt like that, how often he had crawled back to his chambers in the darkness of the night.

"This is no life, Professor," She whispered. "I can't believe they are doing this to you! Are they not caring? You have done so much already, and this is how they pay you back?"

It was inevitable that she would reach this conclusion, he thought resignedly. She was behaving very much the way he had when he had found out about her spying. He could see denial, anger and worry darting across her face as she watched his twitching, bleeding body, a piece of meat good for nothing anymore, something barely human.

She kept silent until he had fallen asleep, and when he started to thrash under the onslaught of his nightmares, she placed her white, cool hand on his forehead to calm him. Again he leaned into the touch unconsciously, whimpering softly, and that little sound was enough to undo her.

She started crying, silently and without moving, the only signs of her distress two gleaming traces of wetness on her face. It was shock, of course, the result of an overwhelming experience, but Severus had seen enough of her to know that it was, in fact, the sign of a far more dangerous state of mind.

Hermione had decided, and this was the only show of regret she would ever allow herself.

"I will keep you safe, Professor," She whispered into the darkness, her voice laced with iron determination. "I will stop this no matter what the cost. I will not let them harm you anymore."

Her brown eyes burnt a flaming trail into the black of the night as she stood watch over him, while he tossed and turned in his nightmares. In the black bowels of the night, he witnessed the death of her innocence, and the birth of a new, terrible determination.

Many memories followed this first one, memories of her watching him, listening in on conversations of Order members, sneaking into the library to learn at night and seeking out dark places around Knockturn Alley. But it was this memory that stayed with him the entire time.

The memory of her young, innocent face that would soon turn into the stony mask of the ice queen. The determination and despair in her eyes as she gazed into the darkness of his barren chambers like a lily among a desert of black sand.

And for the first time in years, Professor Severus Snape wept. Wept for the lost future of a girl and for his own soul, for yet again he had destroyed what he loved.

0o0o0o0

Review, everybody! Did you like it?


	40. Love Is Not Love

A/N: Finally! I tried to get this updated for three days! And ffn simply wouldn't let me… But here it is, and the next chapter should follow in less than a week! 

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**Love Is Not Love…**

xXx

Let me not to the marriage of true minds

_Admit impediments. Love is not love_

_Which alters when it alteration finds, _

_Or bends with the remover to remove: _

_O, no! it is an ever-fixed mark, _

_That looks on tempests, and is never shaken,_

_It is the star to every wandering bark, _

_Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken._

_Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks _

_Whithin his bending sickle's compass come; _

_Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, _

_But bears it out even to the edge of doom._

_If this be error, and upon me proved, _

_I never writ, nor no man ever loved._

Shakespeare, Sonnet 116.

xXx

Hermione was smiling when she stepped through the entrance portal of Hogwarts, her cheeks reddened from the cold wind. She waved back at Ginny, who was heading towards the Quidditch pitch for some training before the dark, for once seeming nothing more than a school girl without a care in the world.

Harry was waiting for her in the courtyard beside the dry fountain. When he saw her approach, he felt dread and worry rise inside him. He didn't know how she would react to the revelations he was about to make.

Hell, he wasn't sure how he felt about the things Ron had told him after much coaxing and a few well placed threats.

It seemed that his former best mate had decided to act. And the result had been mayhem. _As it is usually the case when Gryffindors cease to think and start to act_, a voice whispered in the back of his mind, and it was useless to pretend that it didn't sound like Draco.

Although Ron had certainly displayed some hitherto unknown Slytherin qualities by breaking into Hermione's room, dismantling the wards with the help of some unspecified invention of his twin brothers, entering her pensieve and confronting Snape in the ugliest possible way with its contents.

Two lives and one room plunged into utter chaos. Quite an impressive record for one afternoon.

_I wonder why she kept the pensieve there_, Harry thought while he watched his friend walk towards him with a spring in her steps. _And why the wards didn't hold against Ron and his magic little helpers. I thought she helped with the warding of Headquarters! Shouldn't she be able to pull up something better?_

But blaming Hermione for the mess they were in now was unfair, he knew that. She would suffer more than anyone else from this, except perhaps Snape. And he would have to tell her any minute now.

When she saw his face, worry etched in every line, her smile faded. Her ever vigilant spy self was back in less than a heartbeat.

"What´s wrong, Harry", she asked, scanning the area around her with well trained eyes, "An attack? Or has Dumbledore…"

"You had better come with me, Hermione", he interrupted her, his voice more serious than she had heard it for a long time. "We shouldn't talk about this here, in the open."

She nodded, accepting this as a necessary precaution, though his words did nothing to reduce her wariness.

"Nobody's hurt, you don't have to worry," He told her when she rushed towards the entrance immediately. _Though that's not quite true. I don't want to know how Snape feels at the moment._

He directed her towards the Gryffindor quarters, glad for every minute that he wouldn't have to tell her, but at the same time wanting nothing more than to get it off his chest. She moved towards her Head Girl's room, but he shook his head and led her over to the Common Room's portrait hole.

"We'll take a detour and collect Ron," He told her and saw the lines in her face deepen. She hadn't talked to Ron after the disaster in the Forbidden Forest, and if he was involved, her stiff body seemed to tell him, it couldn't be good.

How right she was.

They stepped through the Portrait hole into a Common Room that was luckily still nearly deserted. Only a few first and second years sat together in little groups near the windows. Harry could see Ron's red haired head resting on the edge of what had once been their favourite sofa.

The three of them had spent afternoons on it, talking, studying, or planning one of their many schemes, each content with their well known roles. The feeling of loss hit Harry with a sudden blinding force, and he lifted his hand to his chest automatically, as if to feel for the blood that suddenly had to gush from such a wound.

The trio had broken apart, and the members of that unbreakable bond, the lifeline that had kept him from falling over the edge countless times, his friends, had somehow become strangers to him, one ascended to a world so different and distant that Harry despaired in trying to understand it, the other drifting rapidly away from everything they had held dear and believed in.

He didn't know how to stop them, how to stay close to both of them without being torn in the middle.

"Ron," He called out, and there was not a trace of warmth in his voice. "Hermione's room."

The red head snapped around, and, after a moment of silent hesitation, jumped up from the sofa and walked towards them.

Ron had been aggressive when Harry had left him, and aggression was it that outlined his body and kept him moving as he approached the door to the Head Girl's quarters. But as he came nearer to Hermione, all strength and anger bled from his body, and when he stopped in front of them, his blood shot eyes fixed on her, his lips bit together to a silent thread, he emanated nothing but the sad, hopeless despair Harry too had felt since he had heard of his betrayal.

Seeing his feelings mirrored in his friend's eyes, Harry felt his heart lifting a bit. Perhaps there was still hope for them.

Silently, he gestured for Hermione to open her door and enter first, grabbed Ron by the elbow and stepped through after her.

The view hit him like a splash of icy water.

Harry had been prepared to handle the situation as calmly as possible, had planned to settle Hermione into a chair, brew some tea if possible and then explain everything to her that would keep the pain and hurt to a minimum.

But he hadn't been prepared for the state of her room.

He couldn't suppress the gasp of shock that formed in his throat, but before the sound could alert the first and second years, Hermione had spun around, closed the door behind them and locked it in one single, fluent movement.

The movement didn't stop. Without once hesitating, she continued to whirl around until her hand found Ron and closed tightly around his throat. She attacked him without a moment's warning, just as she had done after Christmas, when he had touched her unprepared, but this time her leg wasn't hurt, and she wasn't in panic.

She was angry.

"What did you do to my room, and why?" She hissed, slamming the unresisting Ron against the door she had closed barely a second before. Nothing in her face showed what she must feel at this moment.

Slowly, Harry let his gaze travel over his surroundings. Overturned armchairs, their upholstering ripped open and their legs broken off. Her bed a mass of feathers and ripped fabric. Her carpet and wall hangings crumpled together in a heap, exposing the cold stone wall and floor. Her books, lying open on the floor, their spines upturned, like the shapes of animals too weak to reach a hiding place. The ash of the fireplace scattered as a grey film on top of the destruction, giving the impression of a dead layer of dust.

Ron hadn't bothered with discretion, it seemed. He had wanted her secret and had ripped it from her room brutally, defiling everything she had built for herself, destroying everything that had made this place a home.

Harry felt like crying.

Gurgling sounds made him finally turn around again, to the cause of this destruction and his victim. Ron still hadn't spoken a word, but his face was turning from red to blue rapidly, and Hermione didn't seem willing to open her suffocating grip anytime soon.

Harry found that he didn't care about what happened to Ron, not here and now, in this once beautiful room that had fallen to his cruel jealousy, but still he walked over to them slowly and, carefully, placed his palm on Hermione's iron strong hand.

He said nothing, knew that no word was sufficient to calm her now, but after a moment he felt her hand relax, uncurl, and finally open.

Ron dropped to the ground, gasping for breath.

"I'm sorry, Hermione," Harry said, painfully realizing how empty these words sounded. "I didn't know how the room looked. I just wanted to get us someplace safe before we would talk."

She gave no sign if she had heard or understood his words. Her silent, cold eyes darted from her scattered books to the fallen figure of Ron, who clutched his throat and breathed air in quick, deep gulps.

"What happened," She asked again, but the words sounded more like a command to Harry, so hard and unyielding that he found it hard to resist.

Still, he remained silent, walked over to one of the armchairs, righted it and repaired it with a flick of his wand. He repeated the gesture once more and gestured over to Hermione.

"Sit down, please," He said quietly. "I'm afraid this will be a long talk, and you should probably sit for it."

For a moment, she looked as if she wanted to refuse, but then something flickered in her eyes and she nodded slowly. She walked over to one of the armchairs, completely ignoring Ron who was still lying on the ground like a discarded puppet, and sat down with such an appearance of outer calm that she would have fooled Harry a month ago.

"I reckon this had nothing to do with Voldemort, then," She said, and Harry nodded an affirmation.

"While you were talking to Ginny this afternoon, Ron used the opportunity to slip into your room, hidden by my Invisibility Cloak," Harry explained. He saw Hermione's face darken instantly, her brows drawing together like an approaching storm. "I didn't know of this, and neither did Ginny," He added hastily. "Ron saw her knocking on your door and gave it a try."

Her eyes darted over to Ron again, and Harry could nearly feel the trail of ice her look was burning through the room.

"Why," Was the only thing she said, once again more a command than a question.

"He searched for something that would explain your decision, and your behaviour," Harry answered slowly, dreading what would follow this information. "And I'm afraid he found what he wanted."

One moment Hermione had been sitting in her chair with an appearance of outward calm, the next she was up and through the room, her wand raised towards a section of wall well above her head. A flick, and the grey stone vanished, giving way to the view of a small niche it had hidden. A very empty niche.

Hermione froze. Her arm sank to her side and her fingers, suddenly without strength, lost the grip on her wand. It dropped to the ground with a muffled plop, but her eyes didn't even flicker away from the empty space her charm had revealed.

"No," She whispered, the sound supernaturally loud in the silence that lay upon them. "No."

Then, before Harry could react, before he could even rise from his armchair, she descended on Ron, one of her glittering knives suddenly in her hand, ready to strike with all the force she possessed.

"Hermione," Harry shouted in sudden panic while a small voice in the back of his head babbled relief that this room was sound proof. "Think before you do something foolish!"

Still, she raised her knife even higher, her eyes fixed on Ron's pale, horror stricken face.

"Hermione!"

Perhaps the urgency in Harry's voice had reached her, or perhaps she had come to her senses, but he could see her head move a fraction to the side, not once losing sight of the whimpering Ron, but still indicating a willingness to talk. Harry sagged in relief.

"He is a lying, stealing, traitorous bastard; Harry," Hermione said, her voice strangely flat and lifeless. "Give me a reason not to kill him."

Slowly, now that he knew she was listening suddenly weak with the subsiding panic, Harry walked over and, once more, placed his palm on her hand. He knew that he was no match for her, that she could throw him across the room easily, but still he kept his wand secured firmly in his holster, and his other hand hanging by his side.

"Because you are no killer, Hermione," He said softly, and, after a moment, added in a dryer tone. "And we would have a hell of a job hiding the body from Mrs Weasley."

With a soft, barely perceptible ripple below her skin, her muscles relaxed. It was something that reminded Harry more of an animal than a human being, something that once more taught him how much Hermione had changed. But mostly, it told him that the imminent danger was over.

Ron would survive the day, though, quite frankly, Harry wasn't sure if he deserved it.

Swiftly, she rose again and stepped away from Ron's body, her knife vanishing in the same mysterious way it had appeared. She slung her arms around her body, as if to warm herself against the cold, and suddenly seemed younger than her years.

He walked to her side, stretching out a hand once more though he wasn't sure how to comfort her, but she moved away from his touch, and he let his arm sink to his side. Deep breaths of air rolled over him like waves and washed the tension from his body.

The worst was over. Now they could hopefully sit down and talk.

But Hermione didn't seem willing to take, or even move from her position in front of the emptied hiding place.

"What did he do with the pensieve," She finally asked, and Harry's breath caught painfully in his throat once more.

Out of the frying pan into the fire, it seemed.

There was no easy way to say this, he realized, both his hands clenched to fists of helpless anger. _Better make it short then_.

"He gave it to Snape, Hermione, and forced him to watch its content," He answered, then hurried to stand between her and Ron in case of a new attack.

But the awaited reaction didn't come.

For a long moment, Hermione stood completely still, not a muscle twitching, not a limb moving. Then, she started to tremble slightly, like a leaf blown by the wind. Harry opened his mouth to ask her what the matter was when suddenly she stumbled back against a bedpost and slid to the ground, her knees simply giving way under her.

"No," She whispered again, and it was as if some unnamed strength had suddenly fled from her, leaving her body frail and her voice brittle. "Not to Severus."

She drew her legs up until they touched her chest and rested her head on her knees.

"I'm so sorry, Hermione…" Harry started again, but she didn't react to him and her misery silenced every apology or explanation he could think of.

She stayed in that position for a long time, only her shoulder blades moving slightly, long enough for Ron to regain his breath and unsteadily climb to his feet again. He opened his mouth to speak, but Harry sent him a glare and placed his index finger on his lips.

Even Ron seemed to understand that it was not a wise moment to interrupt whatever Hermione was going through.

"I knew he would find out eventually," She finally whispered, still not raising her head from her knees. "I just… wanted to tell him myself."

"That you became a spy to save him? Because you saw him hurt that night?" Harry dared ask, though his voice made clear that she didn't have to answer his questions.

She simply nodded. "Bluntly put, but it about sums it up," She agreed, though something in her eyes told him that she was still withholding something, a fragment of the truth perhaps, or some deeper reason that she even now tried to hide behind the obvious.

"But why didn't you tell him before?" He asked, hoping that he was not overstepping some invisible boundary.

Slowly, Hermione's face became visible as she straightened herself until she leaned fully against the bedpost. Her eyes were dry, though blood shot as if she had rubbed them violently, and there was something incredibly tired about the way her face was set. Harry noticed that her lips were of a deep, bloody red, as if she had bitten on them hard.

"Severus is a proud man," Her voice a rustle of dead twigs. "A man that feels responsible for everything possible and impossible. I knew that he would never forgive me for acting with what he would call "pure Gryffindor idiocy", and I knew that he would never forgive himself for being the cause of my pain and suffering. Even now, after all those months of partnership, I'm afraid that he won't forgive. Which is probably exactly the thing Ron hoped for when he handed him the pensieve."

She sent a glare at Ron, but it lacked her usual fierceness, that burning intensity Harry had become so used to, and that again made him realize how shocked and frightened she really was. Bloody Ron.

But instead of cringing in shame of what he had done, or at least lower his eyes to hide from hers, Ron stood straighter and, for the first time since they had entered, spoke.

"You may not realize it after whatever it was that happened to you, Hermione," He said, his voice more serious and earnest than it had ever been. "But I've only done it for you. I am your friend, Hermione, and sometimes, when we don't know what we are doing, our friends have to decide for us what…"

"Fuck you, Ron!" Hermione snarled, and whether it was the raw fury in her face or the vulgarity that was so unlike her, Ron stopped abruptly.

"I can't believe you did this to me!" She continued, rising from her crouched position so suddenly that Harry backed away instinctively. "Do you have any idea what you risked with your stupidity? I don't know how to fix this, I can't…" Hermione was trembling… "I must go to him immediately, perhaps I can convince him that…"

She was through the room and had ripped open the door already when Ron half shouted, half whispered after her:

"I love you, Hermione!"

She froze. It took her an eternity to turn around to him, an eternity to meet his face with the huge, imploring eyes fixed on her.

"What?" She hissed.

"I love you," He whispered. "I've been wanting to tell you that for months! I bought you that necklace for Christmas and thought that would give you a clue. Hell, I even bought you a ring and carried it around with me for weeks! You don't need that greasy old git, Hermione! You have me, and Harry, and the Gryffindors!"

With a muffled sigh, Hermione collapsed into an armchair, staring at the white walls of her Head Girl's room with a shell shocked expression.

"Do you want to tell me, Ron," She asked, her voice devoid of all emotion. "That you did all this – terrorizing me, antagonizing Harry and the whole Order, breaking into my room to steal my pensieve and show its contents to Severus – that you did all this in some attempt to win me back?"

Ron nodded valiantly, a small smile spreading on his face as the hope inside him reawakened. Finally, she had understood.

"Because I love you," He repeated.

With an angry hiss, she was up and pacing again, her body radiating tension like a panther in its cage.

"And do you seriously think that excuses anything, Ron? Do you think you have a right to control my decisions or violate my privacy just before you feel something for me? Is that the way to show me that you love me, by hurting and abusing me in every possible way?"

The tiny smile vanished as if it had never existed. "But it's… I just wanted to…" He started, but she whirled around and fixed him with her burning eyes before he could express what he had wanted.

"There is no 'just' about what you did, Ron," She said quietly, and it seemed as if the room darkened to her words. "Don't ever try to excuse it. As far as I am concerned, this…" She indicated the room around her, he words dripping with disgust. "Has lost you the last of my trust and sympathy. Quite frankly, it has lost you any respect I ever had for you. You hurt not only me tonight but someone that is very dear to me, and you were lucky that Harry was near, and that I am still not the Slytherin slut you named me, or you would be dead before my feet. Never try to talk to me again, or I might change my mind."

She turned around to leave the room, not even acknowledging Harry's presence. But the Weasleys had never been a family to accept good advice easily, and though Harry found it hard to believe that anybody, even Ron in one of his moods, could be that stupid, the defiant voice of the red head belied this belief.

"But it was only Snape," He muttered, more from a wish to keep his dignity than to argue. But he should have known better.

Her punch whipped his head to the side violently and he couldn't suppress gasp of pain. Unlike back in their third year, when she had cradled her fist after hitting Draco, she didn't even seem to feel the pain this time around.

She just stepped even closer, until her nose nearly touched that of the panting Ron, and in the deadliest tone Harry had ever heard from her, whispered: "Don't you dare use his name! And don't overtax my patience!"

"But Hermione…"

"You, Weasley, are not even worth licking his boots," She snarled, white hot fury in her voice. "Insult him again, and I will rip out your heart and feed it to Fluffy."

And without any further word, she stalked from the room, her robes billowing behind her like the wings of a raven.

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He was sitting in darkness when she arrived, only the flickering flames of the fireplace illuminating his face. A bottle of whisky stood half emptied by his side.

Seldom in his life had he resorted to drinking, but this was one of the occasions when even alcohol was a welcome means to stop the trembling of his hands and heart.

For hours on end the memory of the pensieve had played and played again in his mind.

Weasley had been gone already when he had resurfaced, but Severus wouldn't have seen him anyway, all his power fixed on one single aim: to get him and the pensieve to safety, into his chambers, where he could hide from the world.

He wanted to crawl into a deep hole, in besides the dark creatures he belonged to, never to reappear again.

It had been a lie, all of it.

A stolen life, founded on injustice and the sacrifice of innocence. He had thought it a gift of grace, given to a man who had lost all hope, but with the knowledge of its origins it had become a burden too heavy for him to bear.

He had no right to it. He didn't want it.

Through that mental fog of pain and despair, only one thought permeated: He would have to face her again, and soon. She would find out about this, and if at least part of what he had believed in was true, she would seek him out to explain.

He didn't want to see her. He was afraid of the shame that would burn his very heart to ashes, but even more afraid of the anger, the terrible aggression that he could feel growing inside him. He would lash out at her if she tried to talk to him, he knew that without doubt, and that would make everything even worse for them.

But still he knew that she would come, eventually, and though his instincts screamed at him to do it, he couldn't bring himself to walk over to the tapestry and revoke her right to enter his chambers. That would mean to throw her out of his life once and for all and he couldn't do that, not even now.

He didn't look up when she entered but her smell enveloped him immediately and he didn't have to see her to know how she would look, beautiful as always, lost and nervous as always when she had to deal with emotional mattes. Her chin probably raised in defiance.

"Severus," She called out, but he didn't lift his head from the palm in which it rested.

"Severus. Talk to me, please," He could hear pain in her words, and worry.

"No," He refused, his voice slightly slurred from exhaustion and the whisky. "Go away."

She backed off as if his answer had hit her, and for a moment he thought she would turn around and flee his presence. He wasn't sure if the idea relieved him, but then she changed her mind and slowly walked towards him.

"Harry told me what happened," She said quietly.

"Oh," He answered bitterly. "So it's through the whole of Gryffindor tower already. Did you inform the Order, too?"

"Severus, please."

"Go away."

He could hear her sigh. He felt torn between two conflicting wishes. On the one hand, he wanted to round in on her, to use all of the anger and pain he felt against her, to hurt her as much as the memory in the pensieve had hurt him. But on the other hand, he wanted nothing more than hide away from her, to never see her face. She was the living proof of his guilt, the final evidence that he would never be free of his dark past.

She was the reason he had survived these last months, and had returned to the semblance of a normal human being. She was the most wonderful thing that had ever happened to him, his saviour, his light.

He hated her deeply in this moment.

"I hid these memories carefully, Severus," She continued when it became clear that he wouldn't speak on. "I never wanted anybody to see them! And I swear that I planned to tell you! It just never seemed to be the right time…"

"You can't have hidden them very well if even that idiot Weasley managed to find it. Or did you perhaps show him the way, did you want this to come into the open but were too cowardly to show it yourself?"

"Don't be like that, Severus," She pleaded, and he knew what her face would look like in this moment, her huge, imploring eyes, her strong jaw fighting against the urge to cry.

"Like what," He snapped back. "Not trusting you anymore because I found out you betrayed me after all we went through together? Being rather suspicious because that idiot Weasley managed to break into the room of a master spy and steal her most valued secret?"

"You know that offensive, active warding isn't possible in the student quarters," She answered steadily, though he could hear the hurt in her voice. "And everything else would have been like a signal fire. Teachers and advanced students are in and out of my room, and I couldn't risk anybody noticing such strong protective spells…"

"Why didn't you keep it in your room here, then?"

She fell silent to that and he hoped she would simply give up and leave, spare the both of them all the pain that would follow his question. But she had never been one to choose the easy way.

"You know the answer to that, Severus," She said quietly after a long moment, her voice still strong but underlined with a slight tremble only he could perceive.

"Yes," He hissed. "Because you wanted to keep your secret from me. Because you preferred lying to me, manipulating me as if we weren't… as if I hadn't been…"

Pathetic he was, he knew it well. Laying claim to something that she had never promised, calling on a friendship that had developed not from her will, but against it. But he couldn't exercise the hurt from his mind, the all encompassing pain she had caused him.

He had come to believe so many things in the last months, had come to fix the coordinates of his life solely around her. And now she was not the woman he had been so sure to know. But if she was a stranger to him, how could he ever hope to come to terms with himself? How could he love her when he didn't even know her.

"That's not true," She protested, the tremble in her voice increasing. "I really wanted to tell you, but I know what kind of man you are, Severus! I know you far too well to hope that you would accept being rescued or freed! You once told me that I wouldn't grant myself the pleasures of life because I didn't think myself worthy, but the same holds for you! You think you don't deserve this new life of yours, and you would have hated yourself and me for what I did! Just like you hate me now…"

"I can't believe you went through with this," He whispered. "What the bloody hell made you think I would want your sacrifice? Why couldn't you have simply let me alone? I had dealt with it countless times before, why did you have to be such a busybody and interfere with things you couldn't possibly hope to understand?"

"You couldn't stay away, either," She remarked quietly. "When you found out about me. You felt obliged to interfere, too."

"I am your teacher!" He shouted, his voice snapping with the tension in it. "I was and am responsible for you! I am twenty years your senior, and you are but a chit of a girl that sacrifices her life for a greasy old man…"

"Stop talking about sacrifices, Severus," She interrupted him, her face old and tired. "I didn't do this for you alone. I did it for the whole Order, and you were the bait I needed to succeed."

"But why?" Shouted Severus. "I was fine on my own! Why did you have to meddle?"

"I knew you wouldn't make it long the moment I saw you lying there on the cold floor," She answered, still refusing to rise to his angry tone. "My research only confirmed it, and I…"

"Research?" He half shouted, half sobbed, jumping up from his chair towards her. He was all too aware that his voice was near to the breaking point, that he was behaving like a hysterical teenager, but it didn't matter anymore. Not against the catastrophe that was unfolding around him. "You bloody researched me?"

"Not only you," She answered calmly, as if he had posed a question in class, her face closing down to an indifferent mask. "I researched the Cruciatus and its after effect, the general history of spying and the life expectancy of Death Eaters. I found out everything I could about the potions you took and I compared your behaviour to psychological studies about the victims of continual torture. All my findings pointed to your inevitable death. I couldn't accept that."

"But why you, Hermione? Why did you have to sacrifice yourself in such a stupidly brilliant way? Why not present your information to Albus and let him react? Why…"

"I couldn't be sure that Dumbledore would react the way I wanted him to, and I knew well enough that the Order had no one else with your abilities. I spent a few weeks training myself and decided that I had the necessary talents. It was only a logical decision, after that…"

"This has nothing to do with logic," He protested, pain hammering in his head. "Nothing at all!"

"Quite on the contrary," She disagreed as if this was a scientific discussion. "After taking into consideration everything I knew about the situation, it became quite clear that this was the only way. And I knew how your mind worked by then. I knew you wouldn't see reason. Therefore I found a way to ensure your safety, even against your will. And it turned out that my data was correct. I managed to survive and you found a new life for yourself, just as my studying of you had told me you would."

"I don't believe this," Snape whispered, sinking back into his chair and touching his forehead as if to test whether he was awake or in some fever induced hallucination. "You studied me like a bloody rat!"

"Like a potential weakness," She disagreed, her voice clinically cold by now. "Like someone who could have destroyed all the Order has worked for because he was too proud to admit weakness, too stubborn to ask for help. Like a fool, in short."

Some part of him screamed with pain at her words. So he wasn't more than a number in her calculations? Not even someone she could pity or deem worthy to live? He wanted to lash out at her again, his sharp tongue forming words and sentences that would leave her crushed at his feet, but he stopped himself and, with a strength he hadn't known he possessed, he drove the cloud of anger away from his mind. And thought instead.

It simply made no sense. He could remember her behaviour in that memory, he could remember her oath to him. He could remember every single moment of their time together, her care for other people, her fairness, her wish to protect.

The memory of her pensieve and her explanation simply didn't fit, just as her mental images and her nightmares hadn't fit together so long ago.

She was still hiding something from him.

"Oh no, you won't do that to yourself, Hermione," He said, and the sudden control in his voice shocked her in a way she was unable to hide. "You won't hide behind the Ice Queen to keep your secret save from me. I know you far too well by now to allow it,"

She started to protest, her face blanching in the flickering firelight, but he didn't stop, didn't give her time to compose herself. "There were a thousand things you could have done instead, starting by informing the Headmaster of what you found out. My reaction certainly informed you that he didn't know of my injuries. He would have made sure that I rested better, that I was better cared for. Instead you chose the wholly illogical way of sacrificing yourself for me. Don't tell me this was something you did for the greater good of wizardkind, Hermione! This was personal."

He did know her far too well, he realized. Just as he had seen through her façade of calm coldness, he could now see the panic building behind her eyes. He had only seconds before she would come up with a new explanation, only moments before she would be closed to him again. Only one chance to find out the truth.

"Please, Hermione," He whispered, his voice a silky caress. "Tell me the truth. If our friendship meant anything more to you than just a convenient arrangement, if you ever thought me to be more than your pawn, you have to tell me. I need the truth."

She averted her head, as if her eyes would betray her if they stayed fixed on him. He noticed that she was panting slightly, like an animal in distress, but that she still hadn't fled away from him, though her muscles were tensed as for a mighty jump. She still wasn't sure what to do.

"I must know if I am to continue this life you gave me," He whispered again. "Why did you sacrifice yourself… for me?"

Still she seemed to hesitate for a moment, not sure how to answer this question, and he had already opened his mouth to talk on when she came to a decision.

"Because of this", she whispered, crossed the distance between them in two hasty steps and pressed her mouth to his lips.

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A/N: Sniff! Review if you liked it, review if you hated it, especially review if you want your questions answered! I'm so anxious right now you won't like it…


	41. Sweet Madness

A/N: Oh, I'm so glad you liked the last chapter! Thank you all for your comments, reviews and questions! You can find answers to at least some of them at my forum, just as you should find the preview for the next chapter there, in a couple of days…

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_Still she seemed to hesitate for a moment, not sure how to answer this question, and he had already opened his mouth to talk on when she came to a decision. _

"_Because of this", she whispered, crossed the distance between them in two hasty steps and pressed her mouth to his lips._

_xXx _

**41 Sweet Madness**

It wasn´t the most elegant of kisses for sure, but there was something in the desperate way she pressed her lips against his that touched him more than anything had ever done.

He was so surprised that he froze, unable to react until he felt her tongue brush against his lips. Then, he grabbed her shoulders and tore her away from his mouth.

"What are you doing," He shouted, the shock of what had just transpired hitting him hard. "This is madness!"

"No, it isn´t," She disagreed, her dark chocolate eyes brimming with tears as she refused to give ground. "It´s love."

"You can't love me! That's impossible!" He yelled, his voice hoarse as his fingers involuntary sought out his lips to test the reality of what had occurred.

"Why not? Do you think I'm not capable of it?" She asked, but raised a trembling hand when he tried to answer. "No, please, hear me out, and then you can ban me from your rooms and resume wallowing in self pity."

"I won't listen to a word you say!" He shouted. "Not a single word! This has gone too far already! Control yourself, the Gods damn you!"

"Love isn't something one can control, Severus," She protested softly, her eyes still fixed on him with a mixture of tenderness and fear. "You wanted the truth. I've tried to keep this hidden from you, but you know me far too well by now." She sighed, "Perhaps it is good that you finally know."

"Know what?" He snarled. "That your reasoning is even more defunct than I thought? That you fell in love with the wretched ruin of a man too weak to crawl to his bed? That you sacrificed your life for love? You are too intelligent for this Hermione," Somehow along the way his words had turned into a desperate plea. He didn't want to know this. He didn't want to see those feelings in her eyes! It was too much!

"No," She disagreed softly. "It is good that you know there's one person in this castle who doesn't consider you a mere instrument for the war. Someone that sees more in you and has done so all the way. Someone that loves you for who you really are, and that sees through your masks and pretences."

"You are mad, Hermione! You mistook pity for love! I can't believe you threw your life away for this!"

"I didn't throw my life away, and I can tell the difference between love and pity well enough," She answered, now shouting herself. "You are so used to considering yourself as a monster that you can't even imagine someone could fall in love with you!"

"I am.. I was your teacher," He protested, while a tiny voice in his mind yelled at him that he shouldn't even be having this discussion. He shouldn't have had the three glasses of fire whisky, either. But from the moment Weasley had stormed into his office he had lost all semblance of control, and it seemed that his sense of reality was slipping away now, too. He still felt the burning of her lips on his. "I could be your father! There is nothing in me that you could possibly want…"

"I will decide what I want for myself, thank you very much," She shot back, her cheeks reddening with anger. "I´m not one of those infatuated school girls, daydreaming of a romance with their Professor. I never was! And I certainly don't suffer from a Florence-Nightingale-complex! I thought well and hard on my decision, although you may not believe it!"

"If you had thought that well, you wouldn't have let your Gryffindor sentimentality reign supreme," He snarled, knowing at the same time how unfair he was. But he hurt, he hurt so badly, and the desire her kiss had awakened in him did nothing to make this easier for him. "And you kept all this hidden away while I thought we trusted each other! Was that how you planned it? To keep this secret until I was too close to you to react logically? What do you want me to do now? Fall to my knees and declare my eternal love for you?"

"Fuck you, Snape," She yelled, and he could see that he had hit where it pained her. But he had always been good at this, his tongue a formidable weapon. "I never expected the last months, and I tried to keep away from you as long as I could! I never wanted you to find out, and I certainly didn't expect us to become friends!

"It´s just," She paused, drawing a shuddering breath, and when she continued, all anger had faded from her voice, leaving nothing but pain and honesty. "You´re the best man I´ve ever known. You are courageous, brilliant, cunning and – in a way I can´t really explain – breathtakingly attractive. I knew you were dying that first night, and when I came to know you better I… just wanted you to live. I wanted to know that you existed on this earth, and enjoyed your life again, no matter what happened to me. I still think you have earned that right countless times. And I regret nothing."

He didn't know what to say. Her tear filled eyes left a burning trail on his face, and he wanted to hide from her. What should he do? Gods, what could he do?

When he had witnessed the memories in her pensieve, he had thought that she had felt towards him like she would feel towards a mistreated house elf, or a stray pet, and the thought had mortified him.

But this was much worse.

She had fallen in love with him silently, had witnessed him in a moment of weakness and it had opened her eyes to his true identity. Or what she had believed to be his true identity.

Courageous? Attractive? A good person? Complete nonsense, all of it! He had been a foul tempered, hateful bastard, and only her sacrifice had turned him into what he was today.

A sacrifice he would never have allowed her to make. Better an old greasy git dead at Voldemort's feet than this half existence she had burdened herself with.

And the worst thought was that she was doing it all for him. All the pain and mortification, the torture, madness and rape. All for him. So that he could enjoy what was left of his life.

Some God really had the most twisted sense of humour there was. He wanted to laugh.

But still she was looking at him, eyes alight with hope and longing, as if there was anything he could give her, anything at all that would undo the catastrophe he had caused.

He wanted nothing more than to rip these beautiful brown eyes out, to chase her out of his chambers and forget that she had ever existed. He wanted to turn the time back to that night in his Potions classroom, to stop everything from happening.

But he knew that was a hopeless wish. All he could do was save her from further pain. He could never be the man she deserved. Better then to end it quick, and hard, and open her eyes for reality.

„I don't think we should continue this discussion," He said, coldly, and saw her face pale in reaction. "As I said, this is madness. Perhaps we should stop working together so closely. I will ask Albus to…"

"No," She interrupted him. "No, don't do this to us, Severus. Please. I can understand if you don't want me. Even the idea must seem ridiculous to you, I see that now. You don't have to explain a thing, we'll just never talk about it again. But please, Severus," She was whispering now, her words a desperate plea. "Please don't push me away like this. I know you could never love someone like me, but don't pretend that there was nothing between us, don't throw our friendship away…"

He couldn't help but raise his head towards her while she talked, and he saw that her cheeks were still flushed from anger, her lips a dark red from the way she bit them when in distress, and her brown eyes huge. There were trails of tears on her face.

How could she think he didn't want her? How could she not know what she had become to him?

She was so beautiful.

Without conscious thought, without even knowing what he did, he had crossed the distance between them and pulled her into his arms. Their lips made contact once more and she met him urgently, her desire mirroring his own.

Severus broke the kiss after what seemed like an eternity to him. They were both breathing heavily as he cupped the back of her head and turned his face so that his mouth nearly touched her ear.

"But I do love you, Hermione," He whispered, all logic and strategy forgotten, and could feel how she stiffened in surprise. "And how could I not? Don't you know how wonderful you are? How utterly beautiful? You have been driving me mad for weeks now, I could think of nothing but you!"

She shuddered and blindly turned her head until their lips met again. "Severus," She whispered between kisses, her hands grabbing his hair and drawing his head towards her. "Severus!"

Not once breaking the contact between them, Severus lifted her into his arms and carried her over to the sofa near the fireplace, transfiguring it into a bed and placing her on it without taking his eyes from her face.

"You can stop this anytime you want," He whispered, but her only reaction was to reach out for him and pull him down besides her. His hands darted over her face and neck as their kiss deepened, their tongues meeting and parting, and he moaned as he felt his body responding to her.

Suddenly, she stiffened, broke their kiss with a gasp and he rolled away from her immediately, giving her the space she needed. He sat up, ready to leave the bed, but her hand reached for his sleeve and tugged at it.

„No, don't leave," She whispered. „Please. Severus, I..."

He bent down over her, so that his eyes met hers. Only now could he see that she was pale, her body trembling as if she was freezing, and he cursed himself for not having noticed it before.

She had been comfortable with his touch for months now, and never had he seen her that insecure and vulnerable since Christmas. But he knew how his desire must have felt to her, of what images it must remind her. Of what pain.

„I understand," He told her softly. „We will never do anything you don't want."

„No," She whispered. „No, you don't understand... Severus... I'm afraid."

„Why?" He knew, or thought he knew, but she needed to tell him herself.

„I... I... don't know if I can do this... the normal way," She had turned her face away from him, but still she was holding onto his sleeve, her fingers just barely brushing his skin. „I don't know if there is anything inside me but pain and fear and cruelty. When you kissed me just now, when I felt your body besides me, I remembered his hands on me. I feel so tainted..."

„I can imagine it feels that way," He answered slowly, trying to understand how much she had lost, what things she had been forced to do, wanting nothing but to take her into his arms and make the pain go away, but knowing that she couldn't bear his touch right now. „Every thought of joy and pleasure must be buried below what Malfoy and the others did you to. You probably can't even remember how it feels to do this the right way, to make love and be made love to. But believe me, the memories will return, and we have all the time in the world."

She trembled again, and, to his utter amazement, he saw a blush rise in her cheeks.

„No, Severus, that's not what I tried to say," She told him, desperate that he would understand. „I meant that I have never... never done this the right way. And I don't know if I can – perhaps I'm not able to... perhaps the things Lucius did with me are the only things I'm good for..."

Shock hit him. „Are you telling me that you didn't have any experience before you seduced Malfoy? But that isn't possible."

„Well, I read a book or two, and I organized some muggle films and magazines," She answered, her voice very small. „Victor kissed me, once. But that was all, and it wasn't very impressive."

Snape felt his body go cold as he turned his head away from her, unsure of how to react to this.

Another thing he had taken away from her without knowing it. The purity of the first touch, the pleasure of uniting completely with another being for the first time. He felt deeply ashamed.

„But you knew what would happen," He said, his voice flat and toneless. „Why didn't you take a lover? Just to know what it was like before you went to him?"

"There was no one," She answered slowly. „Only Draco knew what I was about to do, and he is as much a brother to me as Harry and Ron. I could have found someone, of course, but..." She looked up to him then, her eyes dark and bottomless. „I wanted only you," She told him. „Every other man would have been as bad as Malfoy to me," She shrugged. "And I didn't have time for things like that, anyway."

His heart clenched at the image of Hermione, sitting in the Common Room, debating quietly whether to take a lover and then deciding that the work on her Occlumency Shields was more important. Walking into the arms of Lucius Malfoy without a clear knowledge of what to expect and finding only pain, hate and shame with him.

"You are a virgin then," He whispered, shocked by the discovery.

She snorted in reply. "Hardly," She said. "In fact, I can't think of a single part of myself that would deserve that description."

"I can," He answered simply. "Your mind, and your soul, Hermione. You have never experienced true passion, only a twisted, perverted shadow of what it should be. You never felt a touch you could enjoy."

"But I don't know if I can," She whispered, her voice breaking. "Perhaps I am twisted, too..."

"You can love, Hermione," He interrupted her firmly, then smiled when he saw her surprise. "And believe me, it is quite easy to love you. You are not twisted at all. And if it turns out that you cannot enjoy sex after what was done to you, it won't matter to me."

Slowly, hopefully, not sure if she could believe his words, she looked up to him.

"You could accept that?" She asked in a whisper.

He sighed and slowly wrapped his arms around her until her head rested on his chest, their bodies melting into each other.

"Hermione," He told her softly, her name a caress that made her shudder with emotion. "I could spend my life just holding you in my arms like this, and I would feel blessed beyond any imagination. It is you I want, and I love you for who you are. I will accept anything and everything for the right to be with you."

He felt her shudder again as she turned her head so that she could bury her face in the soft linen of his shirt. Slowly, her hand reached up to his face. He didn't move as she explored his skin, touched his hair and nose and finally cupped his cheek, her thumb brushing softly over his lower lip.

"Thank you," She whispered, and something in her voice told him that she was crying. "I love you."

"Sleep, dearest," He told her. "I will keep you safe tonight."

And so she slept, comforted by his warmth and the soft pressure of his arms around her body.

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She woke abruptly, and for a moment, panic flooded over her while she felt a warm, obviously male body so close to her. But the memories of the evening returned almost immediately, and she willed herself not to move, not to make a sound.

"This is Severus," She told herself again and again. "This is Severus Snape, the man you love, and nothing can happen to you. He would never hurt you."

Slowly, the overwhelming feeling of panic and the need to flee faded. Moonlight was streaming through the large windows, illuminating his face with its pale white light. He looked younger in sleep, relaxed and peaceful as she had seldom seen him.

Even now, sheltered in his arms, she found it hard to believe what had happened just a few hours ago. Had he really told her he loved her? Had they really kissed? Softly, she touched her lips and relived that moment again, when he had taken her into his arms and his mouth had touched hers, when he had carried her to the bed. She chose not to think about the reaction he had produced in her shortly afterwards.

Nothing would disturb this moment. Not even her doubts whether it hat been right to finally tell him everything. It was done, and his reaction had surpassed her every hope.

It was strange to imagine that he had been feeling the same for her, she realized, that he had kept the same secrets and suffered from the same silence without her ever noticing. But she had banned these feelings so far away from her conscious mind, had forced them into the darkest part of her consciousness to make sure that her tongue would never slip, that her eyes would never rest too long on him with that peculiar expression of tenderness that would give everything away.

She had resigned long ago to the thought of never freeing them from this cage, and it had only been the mental chaos of the last day, the horror of losing him and having everything forced into the open, that had brought them back to the forefront her mind.

She chuckled inwardly. In a way, she had Ron to thank for this. Telling him that would probably be the easiest way to kill him off.

Ron was another thing she chose not to think of, not tonight, not in the arms of Severus. There was so much going on around them that it felt hard at times to keep all the threads in mind. She hadn't been careful enough about Ron. She had forgotten that, though emotionally as stupid as a flobberworm, Ron was still capable of sudden deeds of greatness, brilliance and ruthlessness.

She would have to deal with him. But not tonight.

Still there was something whispering to her in the back of her head, telling her that she had forgotten something. Of course, Harry! He must be terribly worried by now! She had to tell him that everything was alright.

Slowly, she slipped from the bed, rather proud when her silent movements didn't wake Severus. She accioed her wand from where she had placed it earlier that night, then opened a window and summoned one of the school owls.

Snatching a sheet of unused parchment, she scribbled down a note.

_It is all right, _She wrote quickly. _You can stop worrying. Go to sleep, Harry. And try not to kill Ron._

She sealed it and tied it around the leg of the brown owl which had soundlessly appeared on the window seat. Every further explanation would just have to wait a bit, she decided.

Sending the owl off and closing the window quickly, for the nights were still cold, Hermione padded back to the sofa. The fire had nearly gone out, and she levitated a few logs on the dying coals. That should keep them warm till the morning.

Once more, she turned around and looked at him. He was still wearing his shirt and pants, she noticed, as she was still wearing her skirt, blouse and outer robe. After a moment of hesitation, she shrugged the robe and skirt off, removed her socks and opened the first two buttons of her blouse. She would be more comfortable this way, and Severus had by now seen much more of her body.

She wondered how he would react when he awoke. She knew well enough how much he hated it to lose control. He tended to withdraw even from her when it happened, preferring to deal with his emotions on his own.

What if he regretted what he had said and done? What if he wanted nothing to do with her once he realized what had happened? The chilling thought drove her back into his arms and she silently covered them both with the blankets, arranging his arms around her and snuggling into him.

She wouldn't let him withdraw, she suddenly decided. She had fought him every single step of their journey together, from that first night in Dumbledore's office and the terrible, terrible time of withdrawal to his first proposal of partnership and their slowly growing trust.

This time, she wouldn't fight what the future might bring for Severus Snape and her. She would plunge into it, hold on to every single moment they could share, no matter what the cost.

She knew it would hurt. He was a difficult man, and her position couldn't be called easy, either. She didn't want to think of what Harry and Draco would say, of how the Order would react when they found out what was happening between their Spymaster and their master spy. Not that they knew she was a spy. But that was a problem for another day.

She took his hand and carefully intertwined her fingers with his.

This was hers. Her happiness, how small and short it might be. She wouldn't let anybody take it from her.

He softly mumbled in his sleep, and she could feel a happy little smile bloom on her face. So this was what it felt like to sleep together. To sleep in the arms of her love.

She was quite sure she could get used to it.

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He awoke to the feeling of a warm body pressed tightly against his. Hair that smelled of sunshine and flowers tickled his nose, and he slowly opened his eyes, not daring to believe what he felt.

There she was, snuggled into his arms, her legs wrapped around him and her face resting on his chest. Sleeping peacefully.

He closed his eyes again as a flood of emotions rose in his chest, producing in him the urgent need to cry and laugh at the same time. He did neither, just detached his left hand from her waist and softly brushed her hair back so that he could see her face.

Hermione. His Hermione.

A wave of tenderness rose inside him, and he was overwhelmed by the intensity of what he experienced. If the last weeks hadn't convinced him of his feelings, this single moment would have told him all he needed to know. He was holding the woman he loved in his arms, and she was trusting him enough to let him touch her in her sleep.

He must have done something to wake her, or perhaps she had sensed his movements, for suddenly her eyes opened. She met his gaze, and her face twisted in sudden panic.

For a short, terrible moment he was afraid that she wouldn't remember last night, like she hadn't remembered on Christmas morning, and that everything would be over.

But then her face relaxed, and she yawned, stretching her body against his like a cat.

"Good morning," He said, and lowered his head to her, not sure if he could dare kiss her. She made the decision for him, and when their lips met again, it was as wonderful as it had been last night.

"I must look awful," She whispered against his mouth and he chuckled in answer.

"Never, Hermione," He whispered back, and again his throat constricted when she sighed contentedly at his use of her name.

"I was afraid this was only a dream," She said, her voice still clouded by sleep.

"Me too," He admitted quietly.

They fell silent for a moment, but to Severus this silence was different to anything he had known before, richer, warmer, more peaceful.

"It feels good to sleep in your arms," She told him after a while, her eyes resting on his face with the air of someone who was finally allowed to watch his loved one as long as he wanted.

He chuckled softly. "I don't want to know how said arms will feel once I try to move them, but I can only repay the compliment. I can't remember sleeping so well for a long time."

She closed her eyes for a moment, as if overcome by sudden feeling, and when she opened them again, tears were clinging to her lashes.

"You have no idea how good it feels to hear you laugh," She whispered. "I thought I'd lost you forever, yesterday."

He thought back to the events of the last day. The pain and hurt were still there, he realized, hiding just out of reach in his mind. They would return, but they were nothing against the woman by his side.

"It was a close call," He answered, then suddenly grinned mischievously. "But you did manage to convince me of the merits of an expanded relationship."

"Well put," She laughed. "I'm glad I was so persuasive, then."

His smile faded as he watched her. "There are problems, however," He continued. She wanted to pull away from him but he held her gently to his chest, giving her the chance to escape when she wanted but showing her how much he wished her to stay right where she was.

"I know," She whispered after a moment. "More than I can count, actually."

"No, not quite so many," He disagreed. "Most people will never find out about this, just as most people don't know you're a spy. The Order has no right to interfere with out personal lives and I'm sure Draco and Potter will accept it after a little grumbling."

"It sounds so easy when you say it," She said, surprised, and looked up to him. "What _is_ your problem, then?"

"I am your teacher," He answered quietly and felt her snort in amusement against his chest.

"Now really, Severus, this is ridiculous!" She protested. "You can't be serious!"

"Unfortunately, I am."

She stiffened, and this time she pulled away in earnest.

"I don't believe you," She said. "We have been living and fighting together for months now! This can't suddenly become a problem just because we have shared a kiss or two!"

He sighed. "I have been thinking about this for a long time now, Hermione. Ever since I noticed my feelings for you, actually. I even checked the school regulations. And while there is nothing that forbids friendly contact however close between student and teacher, a 'romantic relationship' will lead to the certain expulsion of the teacher in question and, under certain circumstances, of the student as well. I can't bring Albus into a situation where he has to choose between the things necessary for the Order and the things necessary for the school."

She turned away from him, her head bowed. "I see," She said quietly. "Albus Dumbledore again."

For a moment he was tempted to keep up the tension a bit longer, just to see how she would react, but he knew how vulnerable she was right now, and he would never hurt her.

"Therefore I have decided," He continued, watching her stiff back with a loving eye. "To resign from my position as Hogwarts teacher this evening."

She whirled around to him in shock. "Say that again," She whispered. "Tell me again that you have chosen me over teaching."

"It was the easiest decision of my life," He simply told her and was suddenly assaulted by masses of curly brown hair and a soft body that covered him completely.

She kissed him long and hard, and he found that he enjoyed it tremendously, wondering when her sharp mind would catch up.

The kiss stopped abruptly. So now she understood.

"You are a wicked, wicked man," She whispered in his ear and sat up suddenly so that her legs straddled his body. Severus found that he enjoyed this even more.

"I don't know what you mean," He claimed innocently and was rewarded with a grunt of indignation.

"And this decision happens to have nothing to do with the fact that you want more time for the Order, Severus? Dumbledore would never have allowed you to resign, not in the middle of the year, but this way he can't stop you, can he?"

"That thought never crossed my mind," He protested, grinning broadly.

"Just as I feared," She commented in a mock-sad tone. "A sinner with no thought of repentance. Quite shocking, really."

He rolled around quickly and wrapped his arms around her again, ignoring the slight tingle of protest from his muscles and marvelling at the fact that he was allowed to hold her this way, that she trusted him enough to keep in such close bodily contact.

"I was quite serious in one aspect, Hermione," He told her earnestly and saw her eyes close in a pleasure he couldn't name. "I would give up anything and everything to be with you. This life of mine is yours entirely. I love you."

"Gods," She moaned. "Do you have any idea what that voice of yours has been doing to me these last months?"

He grinned wickedly. "Tell me all about it," He proposed in his richest, most velvety tone, and she groaned again

They kept touching while the day progressed, as if to assure each other that it wasn't a dream, that the other was still there, still willing to share an embrace or short kiss whenever the occasion arose.

It arose often on this spring Sunday.

Jane walked into the living room some time around midday, and although they had transfigured the bed back into a sofa, one look of her sharp grey eyes seemed enough to tell her everything she needed to know, and a broad grin split her face.

"Finally," She announced with deep satisfaction. "I'm going to prepare something grand tonight – looks as if you have cause to celebrate!"

Hermione blushed again – something she had been doing all morning, and Snape found that it made her unbearably appealing. This was another reason for a kiss, he decided spontaneously, and she blushed even more.

"I can't believe I'm doing this," She muttered, embarrassed with the fire in her cheeks. "It feels so stupid."

"See," He teased her mercilessly. "I told you you were a virgin."

She stuck a tongue out at him instead of an answer.

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He didn't want to leave for the meeting with Albus and Minerva, not really, considering that the alternative was a quiet evening with Hermione, but the sooner he got this done the better.

He walked the corridors of Hogwarts slowly, trying hard to turn his thoughts away from Hermione and to the business at hand.

It didn't work, naturally. He still felt as if in a bubble of wonder and happiness, his mind constantly replaying the events of last night and this slightly surreal though glorious day. But although these images danced before his inner eyes and filled him with a chaos of emotions, he couldn't wrap his thoughts around what had happened. It was too much, too fresh to be understood completely.

Before Hermione, he had never experienced something like this, had never made a step before he had thought it through entirely, had never decided before he had cross and double checked everything there was.

Now, he felt as if he were walking in his sleep. Every step seemed logical to him, every decision absolutely natural. What he did was right, he knew that without a single doubt. And this knowledge was completely knew to him.

_If I were able to create this feeling with the help of a potion, I could manipulate people far easier and more elegant than with the Imperius. They would even feel happy about it, _He thought for a moment, but then his mind returned to the image of Hermione, sleeping in his arms, and he forgot about the potion.

It was a good thing that no students met him as he walked to the Headmaster's office. He was grinning so hard that his head threatened to split open every minute now.

Only when he had reached the last corner of his way, still hidden from the Gargoyle, did he concentrate enough to smooth his face into the usual mask of expressionless stone.

They were already waiting for him when he entered the Headmaster's office.

"Severus, my dear," Albus greeted him warmly, though the set of his shoulders betrayed his slight nervousness. "What urgent business brings you to us on this Sunday evening? Something about the next Order meeting?"

"No, Albus," Snape answered calmly. "I am not here in my function as your Spymaster, but as a teacher of Hogwarts."

Dumbledore relaxed slightly. "What is the problem then, Severus? Another complaint about Gryffindor house?"

"I very much hope not!" Minerva commented from her place by the window. "I've become quite used to the peace."

Not saying a word, Severus withdrew a roll of parchment from his robes and handed it over to Albus, who broke the seal and scanned the text quickly.

He blanched and let the parchment sink on his desk.

"What is the meaning of this, Severus?" He asked, ignoring Minerva's gestures to hand the parchment over.

"I do believe the meaning is quite clear, Headmaster," Severus answered without expression. "In fact, it couldn't be clearer."

"But… you can't be serious about this, dear boy," Albus protested, waving the parchment feebly. At her place by the window, Minerva had obviously run out of patience, for she simply raised her wand and accioed the parchment, scanning it as quickly and then looking up with an unreadable look in her eyes.

"A resignation?" She asked. "I didn't know you planned to leave us, Severus?"

"I didn't," He answered stiffly. "Something… came up."

"But what could have prompted this?" Albus asked, accioing back the parchment without conscious thought and starting to wave it about again. "You have been with us for many years now, and after your… position with Voldemort changed last year, I was sure you would rejoice to spend more time with teaching and researching?"

"I certainly did… rejoice, Headmaster," Severus said, lending Albus' word a slight tinge of sarcasm to show how inappropriate such a description seemed to him. "But as things are now, it is no longer possible for me to remain a teacher at Hogwarts. I will, of course, continue my work for the Order and stay a resident here, if that is possible, but my further activities at this school will stop. I am very sorry to confront you with a staff problem at such short notice, but I can name several more than qualified substitutes that would be willing to take over even in the middle of the year."

This explanation however helped only to confuse the Headmaster further. "But you can't simply stop teaching, Severus! I need you in this school! We…"

"I am very sorry, Albus," Severus interrupted him calmly, but clearly. "This decision is not open to debate."

"But why, my dear boy? Why all of a sudden? Why can't we all think about this for a week or two and then decide together?"

"I have personal reasons that will not allow such a delay."

Right. Now he would be asked again, and he would have to answer. Severus readied himself for the revelation he was about to make. He couldn't keep it from either Albus or Minerva for long, both Hermione and he had been sure about that. He was glad that it was up to him to make them understand, that Hermione wouldn't have to sit this inquisition, but still he cringed at the thought of it. This absolutely went against his nature.

_Better than turning into a spaniel, at least,_ he thought.

Albus sighed. He tried to share a look with Minerva, but her eyes were fixed on Severus entirely, still carrying that unreadable expression of hers.

"I have to accept your resignation, of course," Albus finally said when it became clear that no one else would break the silence. "But after all the years we have known each other, I'd like to think that you trust me enough to offer at least an explanation of your decision."

Severus took a deep breath. Emotional blackmailing, of course. It was always that with Albus, that or a speech about the greater good of mankind. Good thing he had planned to tell him anyway.

"If you have to know, Headmaster," He answered formally. "I am about to enter a physical relationship with a student, something that school regulations forbid explicitly."

_Take that_, He thought and had to hide a wholly unappropriate grin as the Headmaster blanched in reaction.

Albus sank down on his chair heavily. "Repeat that," He demanded, staring at his Potions Master as if he had gone quite mad.

Severus closed his eyes. The indignity of this! He was very much tempted to leave the room with a snarl and a sneer. But that wouldn't make things easier, not at all. _Think about Hermione, waiting in your chambers,_ he told himself.

"I said that I'm as good as sexually involved with a female student," He repeated as patiently as he could. "I think you heard it the first time."

Severus waited for the explosion from the right that would certainly come. He knew how protective Minerva was, especially of female students.

But she only huffed in amusement at the Headmaster's continued shock.

"He is trying to tell you that he has fallen in love with Hermione Granger, Albus," She explained dryly. "Finally. I had nearly given up hope."

Had Albus been pale before, he now turned a rather unpleasant shade of pink. "Miss Granger… and you… Severus?" He whispered, and Severus nodded.

"It's true," He simply said, sparing a sharp glance towards Minerva. "Though I would omit the word "finally"."

Albus took a deep, slightly wheezing breath, conjured himself a cup of hot chocolate and retrieved a variety of muggle sweets from a drawer, popping at least five of them into his mouth. At least this evening answered one of Severus long held questions: Albus really did believe in the medicinal value of sugar. Fascinating.

"I must say you surprise me, Severus," Albus finally answered. "I hadn't really expected this."

"Which should once and for all banish the last rumours of your omniscience, Albus," Minerva commented. "It was blatantly obvious for anyone with the eyes to see."

Ignoring the provocation, Albus fixed his eyes on Severus once more, the blue seas very concerned, very serious.

"Are you sure about this, Severus?" He asked. "We are talking about a very young woman here, a woman that has been hurt deeply. You are not an uncomplicated man, and while it would be hypocritical to talk about age differences and the fact that she was, until ten minutes ago, your student, you should think very well about this before you enter a relationship."

Minerva, over by the window, huffed again. "I sincerely doubt that his head has much control over him at the moment, Albus. He has been hopelessly infatuated for weeks now."

"Thank you for defending my dignity in this elaborate way," Snape groaned, then reached up and rubbed his forehead. "Was I that obvious?"

"To me you were, but then I know you well, my dear," She answered, hesitated for a moment and put a hand softly on his knee. "I am very happy for you."

"Thank you, Minerva," He answered and felt a knot in his chest loosen. Until this moment, he hadn't known how much her regard really meant to him.

"Are you really sure about this, Severus?" Albus asked once more. "Are you sure you are doing the right thing?"

Severus sighed, closed his eyes for a moment and pinched the bridge of his nose. There it was, the question that had assaulted him again and again

"To be absolutely honest with you, Headmaster," He finally answered. "I don't think I have much choice in this. Hermione has decided she'll have me, and she's much too good with the knife these days to disagree with her," He smiled tiredly when he saw that Albus wanted to protest. "No, seriously, Albus. I don't have a choice. She is the most wonderful thing that has ever happened in my life. I tried to avoid this development as long as I possibly could, but by now I couldn't keep away from her even if I wanted to."

He looked up to the Headmaster, and, seeing the continuing doubt in the older man's eyes, decided to explain further. It was quite easy to speak about his feelings, on this day of all days.

"She makes me whole Albus, content in a way I have never known before. If I can pay her back only a little of that feeling, I'm willing to give up much more than just my teaching position."

Nothing answered this declaration, and a part of Severus rejoiced inwardly. It seemed that, for once in his life, he had actually managed to shock the Headmaster into speechlessness.

Then, they heard Minerva sigh from her place by the window.

"That was so romantic," She sniffed, her eyes glittering strangely in the candlelight. "Why, I never thought you had it in you, Severus, or I might have snatched you for myself years ago!"

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A/N: The title of this chapter was taken from "Jane Eyre", the scene where Jane meets the blinded Rochester. Just so you know…

_Better than turning into a spaniel_ – Shakespeare, Midsummernight's Dream. One of the heroines follows her love into the forest and declares herself to be his spaniel, meaning that she will follow him faithfully wherever he may go and that she won't give up, even if he kicks her like he would a dog (I'm too lazy to look up the quotation, but if you're interested simply send me a note).

REVIEW! You write such wonderful reviews! Thank you all!


	42. Loyalties

A/N: Very long chapter; I hope you're satisfied with it! The next update might take a bit longer as I am quite busy, but all the dates and info will be posted at the forum as usual!

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**Loyalties**

It was Monday, and Hermione was sitting in her Defence Against the Dark Arts class, letting the stream of Remus' words sweep through her without interest. Sometimes, she would lift her arm and say: "Protego," or "A staff of ash, cut on the night of a new moon," and receive the house points for her answers with a dazzling smile, but she wasn't really listening.

She had learned all types of shield spells in her fifth year, as a preparation for the DA and her OWLs, and once she had learned something, it was very hard for her to forget it again.

So instead of concentrating on the theories behind an overlapping, multiple layered shield, she was thinking about the last day, and, more to the point, the last night.

Severus hadn't asked her to sleep in his room, probably not wanting to force her into something she wasn't ready for. But when he rose from his seat and announced that he would retire, she followed him up the winding staircase.

"Wait for me," She told him with a slightly nervous smile and vanished into her room.

When she had entered his bedroom in her usual pyjamas, a bit self-conscious because she felt terribly young in this attire, he was just leaving the bathroom, wearing nothing but black, wide cotton pants, and her breath had caught slightly in her throat.

She hadn't had to conjure a mirror to know that she was blushing violently again. Hell and damnation, she really had to stop doing that, and soon.

He looked up, saw her staring at him, and, to her immense satisfaction, his cheekbones coloured with a soft tinge of red.

_Gotcha_, she thought, but was too preoccupied by the situation, by their closeness and the tingle in her whole body to comment aloud.

"I always sleep like this," He said, as if to excuse himself. "But I can put on a shirt if it bothers you…"

"I would be terribly disappointed if you did," She answered with a small, daring smile, and as he smiled back, the tension between them broke and left nothing but comfort and warmth.

Slowly, her eyes not leaving his face, she walked towards him until she could stretch out her hand and touch his chest. He wrapped his arms around her and drew her nearer, tenderly, reverently. She knew that she could step back from this embrace the moment she wanted, and she was thankful for the quiet way he cared about her.

She had tilted her head upwards, and when their eyes had met she had opened all barriers of her mind and let her feelings and thoughts, her happiness and love wash over him.

He had shuddered slightly, tightening his hands around her waist and had answered with a stream of emotions that had been so powerful, so strong that her hands had sought his hair of their own accord, drawing his head down to her. She had kissed him, then, and it was long until they had fallen asleep.

"Hermione," Harry whispered at her side and she surfaced from her memories, just in time to notice that Remus had called for a practice session.

Following Harry, she stepped away from their table and to the middle of the room where the other pairs had already assembled.

"Everything alright with you?" Harry asked as he threw a stunner at her and she blocked it easily with a shield spell that, she noticed a moment to late, was much more advanced than the one Remus had been teaching them the whole lesson. But luckily she was Hermione, the know-it-all, and everyone knew that she spent her summer holidays memorizing textbooks, so the little slip didn't really matter.

"Yes," She answered with a smile and a stunner that Harry deflected with a shield of his own. "Just a lot to think about."

"I can imagine that," He nodded and stepped a bit closer, as if to discuss tactics. She could see Remus looking at them for a moment, then grinning and returning his attention to Padma and Lavender.

Breathing deeply, she tried to calm down her wildly beating heart. Right, this was it. She would have to tell them today.

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Harry was nervous. This could, of course, be considered an improvement after the outright panic he had experienced when Hermione had sprinted from her room and vanished for the rest of the day to the Gods knew where.

After the first shock had passed and he had assured himself that a heart attack in his young age was more than unlikely, he had banished Ron from Hermione's chambers, not bothering to be kind and ignoring his obvious need to talk to someone.

He had told him briskly to wait in the Common Room, then had turned to work on Hermione's chambers. It had taken him nearly an hour, but when he had finished, for the first time thanking aunt Petunia for the forced experience in house cleaning, the room had returned to at least a semblance of his former comfort and beauty. Harry knew that he couldn't return it to its original state, but he didn't want Hermione to come back to the chaos Ron had caused.

When he returned to the Common Room, however, it was just in time to see Ron suffer from yet another punch to his face, delivered by an enraged Ginny Weasley.

"I can't believe you did that!" She had screeched, while Harry had hastily checked the room for unfriendly ears. Fortunately, he found no one except the three of them.

"How could you betray her trust like that, you babbling idiot? And how could you dare use me like that? She probably thinks I was with you in it, now!"

"She knows you had nothing to do with it, Ginny," Harry answered instead of Ron, who was clutching his face and grumbling something undistinguishable under his breath. "Please be careful what you say – you don't know who may listen."

"Right," Ginny answered, her face still red with anger. "I think it's time to take a long, nice walk together, Ron!"

And without sparing Harry another glance, she had dragged her brother out of the Gryffindor tower. Harry hadn't felt inclined to follow them.

Her note, later that night, had found him wide awake in the Common Room, pacing nervously and wondering whether he should inform Remus, Dumbledore or anybody else. It had calmed him somewhat, but not enough to go to sleep, and Draco, the only person he could have talked to about all this, was safely hidden away in the Slytherin dormitories. Harry didn't have the nerve to send him a letter there. He _was_ a Gryffindor, after all, and Gryffindors didn't write to Slytherins because they couldn't sleep.

When she hadn't been in the Greath Hall for breakfast this morning, he had started worrying again, but her presence in DADA, mentally absent as she was, had calmed him down completely. She didn't seem unhappy, exhausted or sad in any way, in fact he could see a little smile building on her lips time and again, whenever she stopped concentrating on her surroundings.

It had obviously gone well, then. But he was burning for an explanation, and he could see from the way Draco was darting glances at them that he had noticed something strange, too.

Practicing the shield spell gave them the possibility to talk, but he had learned enough by now to know that it wasn't safe here. Everybody could be listening in on them, spells could be placed on the room, and less than a week ago Draco had shocked him with the information that there was more than one lip reader living in Slytherin House. In fact, it was a popular hobby among them.

"Everything alright with you?" He asked nevertheless and got a smile and a nod in answer. He stepped closer to her, but that somehow seemed to increase her nervousness.

"I have something important to tell you. You and Draco," She suddenly announced abruptly, as if it was the most urgent message in the world.

"Has this somehow to do with Ron's last idiocy?" Harry asked, not wanting to sound too curious. She hadn't told him a thing about her confrontation with Snape, and she hadn't returned to her room till early on Monday morning. He knew because he had checked repeatedly.

"In a way," She answered evasively. "I can't talk about it here. But meet me and Draco in the gym before lunch. I will tell him to be there, too."

The rest of the lesson passed mainly uneventful. Ron managed to knock Neville over with a stunner, and Neville, once someone enervated him, answered with a tickling curse.

Divination crawled by, and though Firenze was a much better teacher than Trelawney, Harry had to keep himself from swearing in frustration. Neither Draco nor Hermione were sharing the class and so he found himself wandering down to the dungeons on his own after the bell had finally ended the long winded talk about Venus and its influences on Mars.

Quickly, he gave the password Snape had provided him with ("subtlety") and stormed up the steps to the gym. He was wheezing by the time he reached the door and pulled off his shoes, but he knew Hermione would need a few minutes more to arrive from her Ancient Runes classroom, and he wanted a chance to inform Draco about everything that had happened over the weekend.

"What the hell is going on," Draco asked instead of a greeting the moment Harry had opened the door. "I think Hermione went mad! Half the time she's smiling like an idiot and staring into space, the other time she stammers and threatens to faint. What happened in your Gryffindor lair last weekend?"

Without sparing time for excuses and lengthy explanations, Harry told Draco everything, knowing that the Slytherin would understand his reasoning. He just hoped Draco wouldn't overdo the insults towards Gryffindors in general. He was in no mood to defend his house today.

But instead of the anger he had awaited, a broad grin spread on Draco's face the moment he had finished.

"So she didn't return the whole weekend?" He asked again, and when Harry nodded, the grin broadened even more.

"I guess I know what that silly smile and the staring meant, then."

Harry frowned with the effort of following the Slytherin's maze of thoughts. When it came to him, his eyes widened in surprise despite his promise to always keep his face as smooth as possible.

"You think it finally happened?" He asked, half in worry, half in elation.

Draco just snorted. "Your precious Weasley tumbling her and him separately into emotional chaos, she running to him with the desperate wish to make it up to him. They vanish from the face of the earth for more than a day and when they reappear she looks like a maiden after her first kiss and he like a man reborn. I met him on my way to DADA this morning, and he didn't even notice me."

Ever since Harry had discovered how Hermione felt about Snape they had talked about this. It had seemed inevitable to the both of them, and although Harry still felt a bit queasy with the thought of Hermione _kissing_ Snape, he didn't find it hard to accept their mutual love.

After all, he had seen Snape's behaviour around her, the tenderness and care he had displayed, and he had heard her talk about him. Not to mention that she behaved far more like Snape these days then like the Gryffindor she had once been.

"Why's she nervous, then?" Harry asked and realized the answer as soon as he finished the sentence. "Because of us," He added thoughtfully.

"Mainly because of you, I suppose," Draco grinned. "Perhaps she's afraid that old prejudices might awaken, or that you, too, might smash her room because you discover your sudden love for her?"

"Oh, stuff it, Draco," Harry said crossly. "It isn't a nice experience when your one friend betrays your other!"

"Especially with all your trusting Gryffindor morals," Draco agreed slightly subdued. Harry was surprised to notice that no insult was hidden in that comment. "We Slytherins never trust each other fully, but for you it must be a full punch in the face."

"Who's talking about punching?" Hermione's voice enquired from the entrance and both heads whipped around to her.

"I just told Draco how you polished Ron's surface," Harry answered after barely a heartbeat of hesitation. He was definitely getting better at this. "And what a glorious sight it was! Even better than when you punched Draco in third year! You know what?" His face turned worried suddenly. "I just realized that I am now the only one of your friends you never hit. I hope you aren't planning anything!"

"Very funny," Hermione answered and crossed the room towards them while Draco started to explain indignantly what a traumatic experience that punch had been.

"I thought it did you a lot of good," Hermione disagreed teasingly, but both boys could see her heart wasn't in it.

"We are not here to talk about the things that would do me good, are we?" Draco said haughtily. "For if we are, I have a list prepared somewhere…"

He mock-searched his pockets, but Hermione had already taken the hint.

"Right," She said, pacing the room nervously. "You know that you are my best friends, and that I never kept anything from you when I could avoid it… I must say beforehand that this wasn't planned, and if I had known before I would have…"

Draco and Harry exchanged an amused look.

"Yes? I don't get your meaning, Hermione," Harry asked sweetly and was rewarded with a frustrated groan.

"What I wanted to tell you," She continued. "Is that I… that Severus…Well, we quarrelled on Saturday, and then… Gods, I really don't know to say this…"

"Let me do it for you then, if it is so difficult," Draco offered silkily. "You have been in love with Severus for ages, and on Saturday he finally realized he felt the same. You had a huge fight, kissed and couldn't keep your hands off each other for the rest of the weekend. Took you long enough."

Hermione was so shocked that they couldn't help but grin smugly. She sank down on the floor hard, with nothing of her usual elegance.

"Was it that obvious?" She asked quietly. To Harry's delight, he saw a huge blush forming on her face. He hadn't seen her blush since fourth year.

"Not really," Draco answered generously, still grinning broadly. "But I am the prince of Slytherin, and Harry is working hard to become my assistant, aren't you, Harry?"

Harry started to nod seriously, but when he saw the flabbergasted expression on Hermione's face he couldn't help himself and burst into laughter.

Draco just sighed. "We'll never make a Slytherin out of him," He commented sorrowfully, causing Harry to laugh even harder.

Hermione just looked at them, eyes wide, and it occurred to Harry that he hadn't seen her so confused for more than a year now.

Then, her mouth curled and her eyes darkened in amusement. "I've created a monster," She commented mockingly.

"No, it's my monster," Draco protested indignantly as Harry took a deep breath to calm himself again.

"Flattering as it is to have you two fighting over me," He said. "I think it important to stress that I am my own monster entirely."

"Oh, but that's the beauty of the Slytherin way of life, Harry," Draco teased him. "We make you do exactly what we want, all the time letting you believe it was all your idea!"

"And do you know what's the Gryffindor way of life, Draco?" Harry asked threateningly. "If we feel that somebody's trying funny things, we simply go and beat him up."

Draco shared a disbelieving glance with Hermione, and she shrugged. "It always worked. Even with Voldemort," She commented calmly.

"Well, mostly," Harry conceded.

"Then I'm really looking forward to see you beating up the Order when they do not follow the will of the Boy Who Lived," Draco said.

"The Order?" Hermione asked, slightly raising an eyebrow to lend weight to her question.

"You know, you're looking awfully like Snape when you do that," Harry said pleasantly and laughed when she added a scowl to the eyebrow.

"I want Draco in the Order," He answered after a moment when the eyebrow didn't lower. "He's been working on our side for more than a year now, and I really think we need to stop that anti-Slytherin atmosphere."

Draco snorted, "That's rich, coming from you."

"I'd be carefully, Draco, or I could remember some of _your_ prejudices," Harry warned him, but his eyes were fixed on Hermione, who was biting her lips as she always did when in thought.

"Difficult," She finally said. "That will be difficult to achieve."

"You don't sound happy," Harry said. "I thought you would want Draco in, too."

"Of course I want him in the Order. What I don't want is to produce an outright refusal from them because we go about this the wrong way," Hermione answered impatiently. "Do you have any idea how far backwards the enmity between the Weasleys and the Malfoys reaches? As far as I know, generations of blonds and redheads have used their time at Hogwarts to tyrannize each other mercilessly. Moody still claims that his early retirement was caused by some trick Lucius played on him. And our own official position concerning Draco has been declared too often and too loudly to be simply forgotten. We can't behave as if all these problems didn't exist."

"But they are on the side of the good," Harry protested and saw Draco roll his eyes. "They must be willing to overcome prejudices! They should be glad that Draco is willing to join!"

"Yes, they are the "good ones", Harry" Hermione answered slowly. "That's why we're not torturing purebloods during Order meetings. But don't mistake being good for being without faults. Prejudices are not good or bad, they're just human. The question is whether we act on them."

She flicked her wand and for two seconds a clock appeared in the air. "Let's get back, or we'll be late for the next class," She proposed, and rose elegantly from the floor.

"Yes, mother," Draco answered, then added in a mock-serious tone: "You know, if it is the Death Eaters that gave you this wisdom beyond your years, we really should make membership compulsory."

"Oh, stuff it," Hermione said and smiled at Harry, obviously waiting for him to react. But Harry seemed withdrawn and thoughtful, and he remained like this until classes divided their path for the afternoon.

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To Remus' mind, staff meetings were a dreadful thing, invented by the Gods to torture poor DADA teachers.

As usually, the Monday afternoon meeting dragged along like tea with a whole bunch of elderly relatives, and he was nearing sleep rapidly when Albus finally finished the last topic of today's agenda.

"Now, before we all return to our work," He said, and the attention level of the room rose immediately with the knowledge of the approaching end of their suffering. "I would like to make a last announcement. I am afraid that it is a very serious one and neither of us will like it."

He paused, and Remus saw that every gaze was fixed on him now. There were never any serious announcements during staff meetings. At least not for the time Remus had been teacher at Hogwarts.

"It is my sad duty to inform you that Severus has resigned from his place as Potions teacher yesterday evening. Replacements are being discussed already, but unforeseen developments won't allow him to teach after the end of this week."

Albus might have planned to say more, but every word he could have added was drowned in the noise that had risen as soon as everybody had taken in the announcement. Hagrid was bellowing in protest, Professor Sprout was demanding an explanation in a very shrill voice and Flitwick was clinging to the edge of the table with all his strength as he had overturned his pile of books in shock and couldn't regain his balance.

Only Minerva McGonagall was totally quiet, watching the general uproar with a strange little smile on her lips.

And Severus Snape, the man who had caused all this chaos, was leaning relaxedly against the back of his chair, his face bare of expression, his hands folded in front of him.

Remus would never again claim that staff meetings were boring. He found himself staring at his colleague in growing amazement, at a loss of how to interpret this decision. Was there anything he had heard that could explain this? Anything that had taken place during Order meetings? Was Severus forced to go into hiding? But the attack on his life, the poisoning, had been several months ago, and no sign of further danger had been visible! Or had it?

But Severus didn't appear stressed to Remus, nor was he angry or worried. In fact, the werewolf noticed after sniffing the air quickly, Severus seemed more content than he had ever been before. There was something happy in his countenance, something extremely satisfied in his smell that Remus couldn't quite place.

It all didn't fit together.

"But why," Remus cried out. "Why now that you can finally teach whatever way you want?"

The teachers, having heard their main question finally articulated, fell silent.

For a moment it seemed as if Severus wouldn't bother to answer, but then he unfolded his fingers, leaned forward slightly and raised an eyebrow.

"My reason are personal," He replied in what Remus had dubbed his final tone. Normally, the discussion would now be over, but the continued curiosity around them prompted Remus to keep going.

"But whatever reasons could you have?"

Slowly, Severus let his eyes sweep over the dumbstruck faces that were assembled round the table. A small, amused smile curved his mouth upwards, and suddenly Remus was sure that they wouldn't find out anything today.

"Personal ones," He answered, and Remus saw Minerva hide a chuckle behind her raised hand.

Having thus created general confusion and irritation, he rose and spoke a few words, about how he would miss all of them but would certainly find time to speak with most of them over the next few days to say his personal goodbyes. It would have been a nice little speech but for the smile that wouldn't leave his lips. And for Minerva's continued chuckling, of course.

Once Albus declared the meeting over, Severus rose abruptly and left the staff room. Waving his goodbyes to the rest of the table, Remus followed him hastily.

"Severus," He called after. "A word, if you don't mind…"

"Not here," Severus answered, not slowing his steps. "I never met a bunch of people as noisy as these. Accompany me to my rooms, if you don't mind."

"Of course," Remus agreed and they walked silently down to the dungeons, into the Potions classroom and Severus' rooms. His breath caught when he made the transition through the tapestry – he wasn't looking forward to this conversation. It was impossible to judge Severus' thoughts from his outer appearance. He might be still furious and if so, Remus could only admit that he had every right.

Quietly, Remus examined the library around him, remembering the last time he had been in here and the revelations that had followed that night.

Severus allowed him his time. As he had done before every single one of their research meetings, he vanished into the kitchen, no doubt preparing another pot of his beloved spice tea.

Settling down on a sofa, Remus gave the place a quick once over. Something had changed, something he couldn't really place.

Where the atmosphere of this place had always breathed Severus and only Severus before, there now seemed to be a new presence lingering in the air and taste of the room, a softer touch of colours and warmth.

He couldn't make it out, but as he stared at the second desk placed besides Severus' old one, he realized that it had to be Hermione.

"Severus," He said when the other man returned to the library, a black, shimmering pot of tea in his hand. "About that resignation of yours…"

"Personal reasons, Remus," Severus interrupted him, still smiling his strange little smile. "Though I have to admit that the possibility of working full time for the Order was a major part of it."

"Oh," Remus answered, sensing that there was much more going on but knowing Severus well enough by now not to hope for further enlightenment. "Right, then. But I really hope you'll tell me one day."

Severus chuckled, sat down in his usual armchair and crossed his legs.

"So tell me, Remus, was this interrogation the only reason why you wanted to talk to me?"

"No, of course not," He hastily answered, rubbing the palm of his hand nervously. "In fact, it concerns the… situation in your chambers, back in January," He paused and took a deep breath, not meeting Severus' eyes. "I wanted to apologize. I mishandled the whole thing badly. I misjudged you, risked Hermione's well being, distrusted the Headmaster and dragged Harry and Ron into a scene they shouldn't have witnessed. I was extremely foolish."

"A marauder apologizing to me," Severus said slowly, silkily. "Black would rotate in his grave," He chuckled once more, then turned serious in an instance. "Forget about it. Although I must acknowledge a certain… impulsiveness on your side, your actions were justified and you behaved as a teacher, or in fact any human being with a sense of responsibility, should."

"I am glad you say so, Severus," Remus said, relieved beyond words but still not quite willing to let the matter go. "But that would mean making it too easy. I should have taken into consideration your position as a former spy. I should have least informed the Headmaster before transporting Hermione to the infirmary. I could have blown her cover!"

"Whatever the circumstances," Severus disagreed. "Your primary duty lies with the children. I could have gone mad, or be blackmailed, or be under Imperius for all you knew. Even though I would have preferred Potter and Weasley out of it, your reaction was right. And it was neglect that allowed you to enter my Chambers at all. If with anybody, the wrongs lie with me."

"But I should have…" Remus tried to explain once more.

"Oh, nonsense," Severus snapped. "If you want to repay your nonexistent guilt, help me with the research! I haven't studied our notes for a long time, but I had an inspiration a few days ago that should solve the problem of immunity against the potion…"

And with a flick of his hand, he cleared the table in front of them and accioed a flood of books and parchments over, effectively quieting Remus' protests with work.

They had been at it for more than an hour when a series of short knocks echoed through the chamber.

"Hermione," Severus told Remus, not bothering to rise from their work when the tapestry glowed golden.

And, true to his word, a moment later the slim silhouette of Hermione Granger travelled through the light.

"Nice to see you, Remus," She greeted him pleasantly while she sent her bag over to an armchair with a flick of her wandless hand. "Brilliant lesson today."

Remus couldn't help but grin at her. "Not that you need it, Hermione," He teased her. "I saw you talking quite animatedly with Harry halfway through."

That got Snape's attention, and he raised his voice, though his eyes remained glued to the journals.

"He decided," He stated calmly, and Hermione nodded.

"Finally," She agreed.

"When?"

"Friday."

Snape now finally raised his head. "We should start planning, then," He said offhandedly, and while Hermione nodded agreement once more, Remus tried in vain to find out what this conversation had been about.

"Chocolate?" Hermione then asked in the same, offhanded tone.

"Gryffindors," Severus simply replied, his eyes turned heavenwards. "Always stating the obvious."

Hermione grinned. "Thought so. Can I offer you a muffin, Remus? The only flavour I'm sure we have is chocolate, since Severus won't eat anything else, prejudiced Slytherin that he is."

"Chocolate sounds fine," Remus agreed, still trying to overcome his slight befuddlement at the fast efficiency of their private code. "Thank you, Hermione."

"You're welcome, and I didn't make them, after all," She answered and vanished into the kitchen.

"What was that all about?" Remus asked weakly, and Severus, who had already buried himself among their research notes, looked up in surprise. "What? Oh, that."

Again, his eyes sank down to the parchment, while he delivered his explanation in a quick, slightly bored tone. "I don't know whether you are informed that Draco Malfoy and Potter have been working together."

Remus nodded to signal that he had, indeed, known, but as Severus was scanning the pages in front of him, this gesture was lost on him.

"We have expected him for some time now to demand Draco's inclusion into the Order, and from what Draco told me this afternoon it seems that he has finally made that decision. He is intending to introduce Draco in four days' time."

"On Friday," Remus added, the short dialogue finally making sense. "But the Order will never accept him!"

"That's why we will start planning tonight," Severus said impatiently, just as the door to the kitchen clapped and Hermione returned.

"Jane told me you haven't been eating enough, Severus," She said sternly while dropping a plate with chocolate muffins in the general area around the Spymaster, who caught it without even glancing into the direction.

Remus was relieved that Hermione handed him his plate the normal way before she sank onto the sofa and concentrated on her own muffin.

"She wants me to make sure that you take at least two meals a day."

"That house elf will be the death of me," Severus grumbled, finally looking up from his journals and fixing his eyes on her.

"No," Hermione answered, grinning. "I have reserved that honour officially for myself."

"Look who's talking," He told her. "You skipped lunch, too."

Hermione didn't even ask how he knew, as he had been absent from the Great Hall, too.

"I am young," She pointed out. "I can afford it. You however…"

Without changing his expression of suffering patience, Severus threw a chocolate muffin at her, which she caught one handed.

Remus felt the need to pinch himself. This odd mixture of brilliance and old couple really gave him the creeps. He felt strangely out of place as he watched them, and not for the first time he wondered about the true nature of their relationship. If this was just a friendship, it was the most intimate one he had ever seen.

Even the marauder's had been only loosely related compared to this. It seemed in a way that the two were not entirely separate persons, but were sharing some sort of continual link that made them understand the other and react to him almost instinctively.

"Thank you," Hermione said happily and set the muffin on her plate. "Now I don't have to get up to collect a new one."

"My intention the whole time," Snape replied.

"Oh, yes," She bickered, rising from the sofa and walking over to an arm chair that had a little fence of books built around it. "I forgot that Slytherins always plan ten moves ahead. Do you mind if I work here?" She then asked the men, her bag already open on her knees

"That's why you are a Gryffindor," Severus bickered back. "We _Slytherins_ never forget anything. Only if you keep that running commentary quiet. Remus needs to concentrate."

It took Remus a moment to realize that the second part had been an answer to Hermione's question.

"Fine, let's talk about working habits," She commented in a mock hurt tone while opening a huge volume. "I especially love the way you insult Gryffindors very loudly and fluently whenever you grade their essays."

"If you had to grade those essays, you wouldn't keep quiet for long, either," He shot back.

Hermione opened her mouth to argue, then closed it again. "You're probably right about that," She admitted freely. "But I am not talking that much when I work, anyway."

Severus just smirked and received an identical smirk back before Hermione lowered her head over a book and a role of parchment.

Time passed quickly over the notes they had made during their research of last year, and the hour for dinner came and went without Remus noticing. He could hear Hermione mutter to herself time and again, but the words were too quiet too be understandable.

He found that he enjoyed working with Severus again enormously. He had simply forgotten how hellishly brilliant the man was, his mind jumping from one fact to the other, intuitively coming to conclusions that Remus would have taken hours to work out.

His "inspiration" needed a bit work, surely, but together with an obscure charm Remus had discovered a few years ago in an ancient grimoire, the idea might just work…

"Oh, I wonder who inflated your ego," An angry voice suddenly cried out from his left side and Remus, having concentrated completely on his notes, flinched violently..

Severus raised his head from the journal he had been writing, smirked again, and nodded towards Hermione.

"See what I was talking about," He commented, and, with a flick of his wandless hand, sent a pillow flying towards Hermione that struck her directly in the face.

She didn't even bother to look up. A flick of her wrist, and a heavy tome from the bookshelf came crashing down on Severus, to be blocked easily. Half a second later, another pillow hit the Potions Master, who had been smirking superiorly, with a solid smacking sound.

"Gotcha," Hermione said, sounding more than satisfied with herself.

Remus had to pinch himself again.

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Four days of careful planning and restful nights later, Hermione and Severus took their places at the Order table, he throwing a look of disgust at her, she flinching as if in fear. The closer they became, the more fun this little hate-game was for them, and she could see McGonagall hide a smile behind a cough.

Remus, whom Severus had told about their 'relationship' the day before, was obviously still having difficulties with the concept, but he was doing his best to hide the confusion and discomfort he was in. As most people around the table had been Gryffindors in their time and thus weren't overly sensitive in matters of the body language, nobody seemed to notice the way he looked at her, and then at Severus.

But these subtle exchanges didn't help much to lighten the tension that rose in the room, affecting even those that didn't know its cause. Much depended on the outcome of this evening, much more than just Draco's membership in the Order.

For tonight would show them just how willing the Inner Circle really was to let go of traditions and long held believes (or rather prejudices, Hermione corrected herself mentally). If they didn't accept Draco into the Order, her plan wouldn't find easy agreement among them, either.

And if they didn't like the sudden revelation of Draco's "real identity" and nature of double agent, Hermione didn't even want to think about how they would react to her spying.

Not to forget the loss of trust and authority this step could cost Dumbledore.

Hermione, Draco and Harry had spent several hours rehearsing Harry's request to introduce Draco until her friend was absolutely confident everything would work out just fine. Draco however remained sceptical, and Hermione couldn't help but agree.

Dumbledore, Remus and McGonagall would be on their side, naturally, as would be Severus.

But if the rest of the Inner Circle, Arthur and Molly Weasley, Kingsley Shacklebolt, Tonks, and, most important, Moody would disagree, there would be no introduction. And Hermione didn't believe that years of mistrust not only towards Draco but his whole family could be wiped away by one speech, not even if it was delivered by the Boy Who Lived himself.

But however they might react, Severus and Hermione were ready. Draco would become a member tonight, if from the Order's free will or the little something they had prepared didn't matter to her.

Looking to all the world like a slightly bored school girl, she undid her ponytail and, behind the curtain of her hair, shared another look with Severus.

_Draco is waiting in Albus' office,_ Severus thought at her, _At the moment, the Headmaster probably drives him crazy with hot chocolate and muggle sweets. I swear that he became even more addicted to them since I told him about us_.

Hermione sent him a smile, remembering how they had shared their frustration about the world in general four nights ago, after Remus had left. She had told him about Harry's and Draco's reaction that had mirrored Minerva McGonagall's, and he had scowled in irritation.

"Some pair of spies we are," He had said, disgusted at their lack of subtlety.

"I like the way you say 'we'," Had been her only answer, and he had laughed throatily to that, causing another one of her blushes.

_I like the way you think 'us'_, She now told him, and, to her own surprise, managed to send him an accurate imitation of a mental blush: a red haze of embarrassment and warmth that forced him to hide an inappropriate sound behind a cough.

_Now really_, She could feel his amusement washing through the thoughts. _Hermione! Not in front of the Order!_

And thus she blushed again, glad for the veil of hair that shielded her from view. She really had to do something about this. Perhaps an anti-Severus-sensitivity campaign. They could take a bath together and he would read Byron to her for hours… The blush deepened.

_Concentrate!_ She told herself, and then, with a look at Severus, they thundered the thought together: _CONSTANT VIGILANCE1_

Dumbledore was one of the last to enter the scene. He beckoned for them all to settle down, and once they had taken their chairs and the noise had settled down, only he and Harry remained standing.

"Welcome, everyone, to our meeting of the Inner Circle," Dumbledore announced happily and the members traded greetings among each other. "We have a few matters to discuss tonight, but before I open the meeting proper, there is a request of membership for us to discuss."

This announcement was met by surprised faces around the table. It had been clear to all that Harry and Hermione would enter, though it had been a small shock that Ron wouldn't join them. But no one had heard of another would be member being introduced soon, and the speculations about his identity were clearly readable on their faces.

Hermione produced a confused frown and a questioning look towards Harry, while Severus' face remained expressionless as usual.

"Who is it?" Moody asked, and as if this had been an invitation, Dumbledore turned half back to the closed door of his office.

"You may enter," He called out and they saw the door open slowly.

Somewhere opposite to her, Hermione could hear a gasp, but she was concentrating on Draco and her own expression of disbelief, shock and mounting panic.

Draco was looking determined but visibly nervous as he slowly walked into the room and stopped on the exact spot where both Harry and she had stood when they had been introduced.

_Now, Harry, _She thought fervently, _While they are still under shock!_

And as if he had heard her, or perhaps just because his own sensitivity for atmosphere and timing had increased over the last weeks, Harry took a deep breath, then stood before confusion could change into outrage.

"As it is my right as full member of the Inner Circle," He announced. "I request that you grant membership to Draco Malfoy."

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**A/N:** Sorry about the cliffie (yes, I know, another one…), but fifteen pages per chapter are a limit I won't overstep. Otherwise you will soon have me writing thirty pages and updating only half as often, and we wouldn't want that, now would we? (Don't answer that question if you disagree!)

Thank you all for your reviews! Give me some more, please!


	43. A Dinner And A Plan

**A Dinner and a Plan**

For a moment, there was silence. Then Hermione sensed movement around the table and one member of the Inner Circle found its voice again.

"_Draco Malfoy_," Tonks asked, and there was such utter disbelief in her voice, such lack of understanding, that Draco cringed in embarrassment. Hermione knew that this reaction was as calculated as could be, that Draco would try to play the humble and repentant, but still she felt for him. What mortification! To be evaluated and judged by these people like cattle. And she knew how badly Malfoys dealt with mortification.

Harry nodded to the question. If he had noticed Draco's reaction, he didn't let on.

"Yes, Draco Malfoy," He answered, doing a good job of sounding professional and mature. "Who has been an important informant to the Order for more than a year and one of my best friends these past five months."

The last part was a lie, of course, but they couldn't really play Hermione's acquaintance with Draco, and so they had decided to "deepen" the relationship between Harry and him. Not that it was impressing anybody, by the look of it.

"Informant?" Tonks echoed again, as if the formulation of individual sentences surpassed her abilities at the moment.

This time, it was Dumbledore who nodded. "Since Lucius Malfoy was arrested during the Ministry incident nearly two years ago, Draco has told me about every letter his father has written to him. We have even managed to plant one or two false hints into his letters back."

"Why haven't we known about this?" Moody growled, his paranoid magical eye darting from Harry to Draco to Dumbledore. "It seems that there's quite a policy of keeping the Inner Circle uninformed. Or is there an inner Inner Circle I didn't know of?"

Even Dumbledore, good natured, twinkling Dumbledore, bristled at this open display of mistrust. But it was Severus who answered, his voice sleek and slightly mocking like oil.

"It has never been Order policy to reveal spies and informants to every member," He said. "I was an exception. And you weren't kept in the dark because of any secret conspiracy, Moody, but because of the safety of every single one who risks his life by playing facts into our hands. Only the obliviate we developed a few months ago can keep all of you from – involuntarily – betraying informants like Draco. And then there's also the personal wishes of our spies to be considered."

"So Malfoy didn't want us to know? I wonder why?" Moody asked back, not willing to let his point go. "Perhaps because it is easier to mislead his Head of House and a boy his own age?"

"Do you insinuate that I am easily deceived, Moody?" Snape purred back, and the temperature in the room dropped a few degrees.

"I am only saying that a Malfoy can't be trusted," Moody paddled backwards, realizing that he had gotten himself into dangerous waters.

"Draco has been willing to not only risk his family, but his very life," Harry protested. "He is protected by the same memory charm that keeps all of us safe. He is as dedicated to our fight as I am. And he has helped me in more ways you can imagine."

"But you have always hated each other!" Molly Weasley protested.

"People change," Harry answered flatly, and Hermione saw Mrs Weasley deflating visibly, no wonder remembering that her son had abruptly severed all ties to his former best friends a few weeks before.

"But always for a good reason," Arthur Weasley said, slowly and thoughtfully but with an edge in his voice. Hermione remembered how Lucius and he had started a fight in the middle of Flourish and Blotts. Lucius Malfoy was one of the very few that could crack Mr Weasley's composure.

Normally, Mr Weasley was friendliness incarnated. He was also one of the most influential Inner Circle members. Like Shacklebolt or Moody or even Dumbledore, he didn't say much and was slow to judge. But when he talked, and when he gave an opinion, everybody was bent to listen.

And Arthur Weasley _hated_ the Malfoys.

"I would like to know Draco's reason for changing sides," Mr Weasley now continued, and, when Harry started to answer, held up a hand to stop him. "No, Harry. I think Draco should speak for himself."

Inwardly, Hermione tensed. They had expected this, of course. There wouldn't be an admission to the Order without Draco's personal statement. But he was angry, although he didn't let on, and it was of dire importance that he sounded absolutely authentic. The Inner Circle was much too good in taking up nuances for letting any kind of arrogance slip now.

"First of all, I'd like to thank you for letting me speak," Draco began, and while Moody snorted in disbelief, Hermione could see that the polite manners were working on both Arthur and Molly Weasley favourably.

"I understand it is hard to believe that a Malfoy could 'suddenly' change," He continued. "But you must consider the circumstances I found myself in after the fight in the Ministry. When my father was captured, and Harry and Professor Dumbledore defeated Voldemort – again – everything I believed in was in ruins."

_He's good,_ Hermione thought. _Even with the little quiver at the last word. Perfectly performed_. But then, Draco was very much telling the story of his life. They had decided to mainly stick to the truth, and although he would never display such feelings in public, they were there, controlled but powerful.

"I had never questioned my father or the path he had decided for me, and I had learned from the cradle onwards that Harry Potter was the cause of all our misery. But when my father became a prisoner, nobody helped. My house turned against me, mostly, and I had begun to suspect that Professor Snape, one of the few that would look after me, wasn't as loyal to Voldemort as I had always thought."

Draco hadn't suspected any such thing, of course, until Hermione had told him, but the ways of the Slytherins were untraceable to most, and they wouldn't doubt that little snippet.

"Then my father escaped, and started to write me secret letters. He…" Draco paused and stroked back his hair in a gesture of nervousness. _He's really good_, Hermione thought proudly. "He was behaving as if nothing had changed, while I was being treated like something not worth being even noticed. And that got me thinking. I started to watch and observe Harry and his friends, Dumbledore and those teachers I suspected to be in the Order. I started wondering whether my future wasn't as fixed as I had always believed, whether I still had a choice to do what was right, not what was easy. And when my father commanded me to find out more about Hogwarts' wards, I decided that I didn't want this school to fall under the hand of Voldemort. And I went to Dumbledore."

When Draco had finished, Hermione let a covert glance scan and judge the people around the table. Tonks seemed to be wavering, and Shacklebolt's face was as unreadable as always. Moody still looked as if he would rather throw Draco out of the room, and Arthur Weasley looked very serious.

"Well spoken," He said. "But it could also be well rehearsed. What can assure us that you didn't decide to spy on us instead, to further your position with Voldemort? Your father could have demanded that of you, couldn't he?"

"Exactly! That boy's good for nothing," Moody growled from his place at the table, and Draco blushed violently. This reaction, Hemrione knew, was real. Draco had always felt nervous around the old auror, even though he hadn't really been the one who had turned him into a ferret in fourth year. "Like the father, like the son."

"Now Moody, that's a bit harsh!"

"But isn't he right about it?"

"Yes, how can we know…"

"I bet he's just pretending until his time comes…"

"Voldemort always wanted a spy in our Circle!"

"Please, my friends," Dumbledore finally interrupted the whirlwind of questions and protestations. "As a full member, it **is** Harry's right to ask for his introduction. I would also like to add that both Severus and me second this proposition. Don't you see that his wish to work with us is honest?"

"He's a Slytherin," Shacklebolt answered, untrustingly. He had suffered from Lucius Malfoy's arrogance as long as he had been an auror. "No one lies better than Slytherins. Some of them have even managed to lie their way through Veritaserum."

"How can you judge him by his house, or by his father?" Harry demanded, a slight edge of anger rising in his voice. "If we are not better than that, we can just go and start hating purebloods. Prejudices like this are just that: prejudices!"

But that statement produced only another chaos of voices and demands. Hermione could hear Moody shout something about brainwash, Molly was screeching about how children shouldn't criticize their betters, and even Tonks seemed livid by the suggestion that her opinion was based on prejudices. Harry's shoulders slumped in defeat as he realized that he had damaged more than he had achieved.

In the midst of chaos, Hermione and Severus shared one short, meaningful look.

_They are not buying it, Severus,_ She thought at him, and felt his sigh.

_It seems so,_ He agreed. _I am afraid it is time for Plan B._

Hermione sent a nonchalant shrug. _Should be fun_, She told him, then she suddenly sprang up from her chair.

„I can't believe this, Harry," She shrieked, so loudly that even Molly Weasley stopped shouting in surprise. „That slimy ferret ball? He would never change, there's not enough brain in his head to even grasp that concept! He is our enemy! We should kill him off, like Ron always said, not grant him entrance into the Order! Has he imperioed you, or what? He is nothing but pureblood scum! He deserves to rot in hell for the rest of his life! The likes of him have no place here!"

Shocked silence met her outburst. Only Draco let his eyes rest on her sadly, not even trying to defend himself. Harry was obviously stunned with surprise. He had suspected resistance, but certainly not from her.

„Now, see here, Hermione," Arthur Weasley said after a moment. „That is not the way to talk about a fellow wizard. Even if Draco hasn't been nice to you these past years, there is still a chance he could change..."

„Change?" Hermione shouted, her voice breaking. „A Malfoy and change? Evilness is bred into their very blood! He and his family are hopeless! They should have been killed off years ago! But instead of doing the right thing and landing the whole family in Azkaban, you allow membership to one of them! Even Fudge is doing a better job than you are!"

„Do not use that tone with us, young miss," Molly Weasley snapped back, her eyes for the first time leaving Draco's face. „If the Order decides to make him a member, it is his good right. Nobody will be judged in this room just because of who his parents are!"

„I only judge him because of who he is," Hermione was still yelling, and from the look on her face, she wouldn't stop any time soon. „A bloody Death Eater in making! I always questioned your choices as to whom you give your trust, Headmaster, but Malfoy is even a worse choice than that slimy Death Eater you made spymaster!"

„Enough," Moody's growl washed over them like a storm. „I'm afraid I have to agree to Severus, girl. If you can't behave according to your age and responsibilities, there is no place for you here. Draco Malfoy will become a member of this Inner Circle, and if you don't like it, you can leave right now!"

Harry thought he had heard wrong. Moody, announcing his support of Draco? And not only that, for he heard other voices murmur agreement, Tonks, and Shacklebolt, and the Weasleys.

„I see," Hermione said, tears wetting her cheeks. „You are all against me. But let me say this: Your choice is stupid! You will regret the day you let a Malfoy enter the Order!"

And before another word could be said, she rushed over to one of the tapestries and went through, her voice breaking when she called out her password.

It was only a formality from there on. Intent on ending the embarrassing situation as quickly as possible, sending one apologizing glance after the other to Draco, who was still standing in the middle of the room, pale and slightly trembling, the Order agreed on granting Draco Malfoy the status of full member of the Inner Circle and finished the meeting without discussing a single point of their agenda.

"Mr Potter, Mr Malfoy. Accompany me to my office, please." Snape then invited them as the other members flooed away as quickly as possible and Dumbledore vanished into his own room, not before congratulating Draco heartily.

"We have to adjust the wards to your new status."

They remained silent until Snape had closed and warded the door behind them and walked over to his chair.

„That," Draco said the moment Snape sat down, admiration in his voice. „Was the best case of mass manipulation I ever witnessed. I will never dare to even use the word „subtlety" again."

„You mean this was all faked?" Harry asked, still dazed by the sight of a hysterical Hermione.

„Of course, Potter," Snape answered from his place behind the desk, gesturing them over to the pair of armchairs opposite to his. „There wouldn't have been a chance in hell to convince them of Draco's trustworthiness, as the discussion at the beginning clearly showed. A few minutes more and they would have refused openly, thus ending all hopes of introducing Draco. The only possibility to sway the public opinion in such a situation is to present them an attack to grossly out of character that they will take the other side, no matter what they have thought a second before."

He chuckled dryly, but there wasn't much humour in his words. _It must be hard to see people that way_, Harry thought. _To know about their every weakness._

„Common sense forbade them to agree with Hermione. They are, after all, the good ones," Snape smirked evilly while his wand moved in complicated swirls above Draco's head, keying him to the wards. „Even though Molly and Moody were probably thinking along the same line, they never would have admitted it aloud. Hermione's outburst forced them to take the other side, and from there, it was only a matter of some minor persuasion to make them agree to Draco's membership."

„You have planned this?" Harry asked, not believing what he heard. „You and Hermione have planned to manipulate the Order like this all the time?"

„Half the meetings are spent with Hermione and me manipulating the Order," Snape answered, now clearly amused. „It's our main amusement these days. Didn't you notice that?"

He smiled darkly at the dumbfounded expression on Harry's face.

„Now that Draco is an official member," He then continued. "We can finally start working in earnest. A little conspiratorial meeting is planned for tonight. Accompany me to our chambers," His eyes met Harry's and his lips twitched lightly. "I was ordered by Hermione to tell you that you are welcome, too," He said.

"Thank you," Harry answered, still trying to grasp the magnitude of what had happened. "Did anybody ever tell you that you are real scary?"

"Of course."

They found Hermione curled in an armchair, sleeping. Snape walked over to her quietly and touched her cheek. She was awake and up in an instance, but Snape caught the fist aimed at his face with ease and before her knee had risen completely, she had recognized him.

"So it went well," She smiled, as awake as if she had never slept, and completely ignoring the fact that she had just attacked him.

"Naturally," Snape answered, kissing her hand and then letting it go.

Draco and Harry traded an amused look, then turned back towards Hermione who walked over to them. She hugged them both, congratulating Draco to his membership and grinning amusedly when she received more than one compliment for her acting talents.

"Dinner should be ready at eight," She then announced. "You told them already what this is about, Severus?"

"I have done more than enough explaining to imbecile adolescents over the last ten years, thank you very much," He answered with more than a hint of arrogance in his voice, and Harry felt his spine go rigid as if in expectation of a kick. This sounded much more like the Snape he had known for so many years.

But Hermione just snorted. "Prat," She answered. "If you have nothing of value to contribute, off into the kitchen with you!"

"I'd be careful if I were you," He warned her, but this time Harry was sure that the dangerous undertone in his voice was for fun. Nevertheless it made his skin crawl a bit. "I happen to know that you have no knives on you at the moment."

"And _I_ happen to know that Jane is waiting for you impatiently. You may best me, but you certainly are no match for her when she thinks you spoiled her dinner."

The lofty expression on the Potions Master's face vanished in an instance, and, giving a little bow to show that he had found his mistress, he disappeared into the kitchen.

Draco chuckled while Harry was still busy gazing from the kitchen door to Hermione in unadulterated shock.

"So what _is_ this meeting really about," The Slytherin asked and returned to the sofa.

"We want to determine a course of action," She answered. "It is time for us to stop just reacting to Voldemort's plans. Now that you a member of the Inner Circle and Harry is well established, we have everyone in we need to change a few world views," She smirked. "Not to mention that we have now established a secure majority."

"Poor Moody," Harry remarked with a sad shake of her head. "Remember how he talked about conspiracies tonight? He seems doomed to be always right in the end."

"So this is about planning the future of the Order?" Draco asked, impressed against his will.

"Hopefully not only of the Order, but also of Voldemort," Hermione answered. "But above all that, it is also a dinner to celebrate your initiation, of course. We cooked up something fantastic!"

"Don't tell me that you did the seasoning," Snape pleaded while he closed the kitchen door behind him and walked back towards them.

"Nope," Hermione answered pleasantly. "I was degraded to cutting and peeling while Jane ordered me around. Didn't she tell you?"

"She left me in the dark on purpose, to wreak havoc on my nervous system. So you didn't touch the salt?"

"Nope," She grinned at him.

"The gods be thanked," Draco breathed out, clutching his chest with a dramatic gesture.

Hermione snorted and, noticing Harry's confused expression, leaned back in her armchair and explained with a mocking face. "Remember my knitted hats in fifth year?" She asked Harry, and he nodded unsteadily. "I cook worse."

"There is no fitting adjective for how you cook, Hermione," Snape cut in and sat down beside her. "It is below words."

Draco and Hermione laughed, and Harry found that it wasn't difficult for him to join in.

0o0

Remus and Minerva were the first ones to arrive for dinner, and Minerva's heart felt congratulations on how they had hoodwinked all those "stubborn old Gryffindors" made it easy for Hermione to ignore the strange way Remus looked at her.

He had accepted their relationship willingly, or at least that was what Severus had told her of their talk, but it seemed that he couldn't accept her abilities quite as easily. He was always nice and friendly, of course, but in a wary sort of way. Even now, while she served tea and coffee, strangely touched that Severus, traditional as he was, had thus presented her as the lady of the house, she could feel Remus's eyes on her back, questioning, worrying, wondering.

But luckily, there were enough strange sights in the room to divert his attention from her, the harmonic and friendly atmosphere between Harry and Draco being one of the most notable.

When Draco had offered his first lofty insult against Gryffindor house, Remus' eyes had narrowed in anticipation of the angry reaction from Harry. Whose response, as lofty and arrogant as the Slytherin's remark, however, had widened his eyes in surprise. The bickering and teasing that followed caused his eyebrows to challenge his hairline, and when Hermione walked over to them and playfully smacked both their heads together, earning a unified cry of protest from the prince of Slytherin and the lion of Gryffindor, she could see him shake his head in resigned disbelief.

Hopefully, he would soon get used to the boys' behaviour. The additional Defense training he would give to them should help in that respect. She grinned. Not that Remus knew of this training yet, but that was only a matter of days.

After it he had finally realized that Draco and Harry wouldn't kill each other as soon as he stopped watching them, Remus turned his attention and charms towards Minerva, with whom he was soon deep into a discussion about Quidditch.

When their guests seemed to be well cared for, Hermione let her gaze wander around the room in search of Severus.

Her eyes, used by now to lingering on him, found him in the shadows, half hidden by the winding staircase. Walking over to him, she leaned against the wall to his left, close enough to feel his warmth and smell his unique, earthy scent.

He smiled but didn't take his eyes off the people gathered in his library.

"Nervous?" He asked, not in a whisper, for those were often more audible than a low voice, but he softened his articulation until his voice carried no further than the shadows shrouding them.

"Not about their reaction," She answered in the same, low tone. "Remus seems still unsure on how to take all this, but he's too far in by now to spill. He'll go along."

"Of course he will," Severus agreed. "It's just his Marauder's view of the world going to pieces. Gryffindors are naturally averse to spying. And to see a little girl," She nudged him playfully, knowing at the same time that this was probably the exact picture Remus had had of her a few months ago.

"To see a little girl deceive the Dark Lord himself," Severus continued with a smirk. "A Slytherin become second highest in the Order and James Potter's son of all people fraternise with the enemy," His eyes moved towards Harry and Draco talking quietly in front of the fire.

"All that is probably a bit much. Especially as the approximate brain capacity of a Gryffindor is considerably lower…"

She nudged him again, a bit harder this time, and his smirk widened.

"Then why so tense?" He asked once more, and she could feel a happy warmth blooming inside her. It was rather pathetic for a spy to be glad that someone could read her so easily, but still she couldn't help to like it tremendously.

She turned towards him, and their eyes met.

_It's as if we had dropped a stone into a lake, _She thought at him, _The water was calm till now, but that will change, and who knows how large the circles will become before we can stop them again._

For a moment she wished that he would deny the importance of this night, but she could feel his agreement in her head. He wouldn't ever coddle her by playing down what would happen, not Severus, and she knew she loved him for it.

_I understand_, He sent back, _This night will set everything in motion, and no matter what the outcome, our world will be changed forever by our plans. It is a heavy responsibility. _

The feeling of arms wrapping around her, holding her secure made her close her eyes for a moment in silent enjoyment. _But you do not carry it alone_, He then continued, _It lies on both our shoulders, and whatever will come from this, we will bear it together._

_I have done terrible things, Severus_, She whispered into his mind, _And there will be more dreadful deeds before this war is over. I will have to step out of the shadows. And how will they look at me then? _Her mental finger pointed towards Draco and Harry, still sitting by the fireside, and Remus and McGonagall, who were laughing softly together. _What will I see in their eyes when all is over? Hell, I will propose them a battle tonight! What will I see when this evening is over?_

_These are no strangers that will turn on you,_ He told her softly, _Every one of them has seen enough evidence of your abilities and work to understand what you are, what you do, and to turn away like Weasley has done. But they stand with you. And while I generally think Gryffindors capable of every stupidity,_ He smiled at her, _Always keep in mind that they were loyal to you before._

He paused, and when she looked at him again, his smile was positively fiendish while he switched into spoken language again. "Not to mention that we can obliviate them all if they don't react to our liking."

She laughed, delighted by the image of Severus grabbing Dumbledore's long beard and thundering and "Obliviate" towards him.

"You're right," She agreed and let her head rest on his shoulder for a moment. She felt a feather like touch on her hair, a soft caress of her neck and then his hand was gone again, but the warm feeling remained.

"Let's return to them," He finally proposed. "The Headmaster should arrive any moment."

As if on cue, the tapestry connecting Snape's chambers to the Headquarters glowed for a moment and gave three chimes, the signal that someone without the proper passwords wished to gain entrance.

0o0

With Dumbledore's arrival, the evening turned more formal. Jane appeared a few minutes later to serve dinner and everyone restricted themselves to small talk while they feasted on her excellent cooking.

Only Draco had eyed his food a bit nervously in the beginning, all too aware of the withering glares Jane sent over to him. Their first meeting hadn't gone well, what with him belonging to a family that was famous for mistreating house elves, and he didn't quite trust the harmlessness of the food she offered him.

But when Hermione performed a quick detection charm on his meal, grinning wildly in amusement and, of course, finding nothing. he too began to eat, and with tremendous pleasure.

He was giddy with relief. Despite the calmness he had projected the whole day, he had been nervous as hell. To think that he was now a member of the Order of the Phoenix! His father would kill him were he stood! And while Draco seriously hoped that Malfoy senior would never find out about the new allegiances of his heir, it felt good to have finally taken his stand.

Once dinner was finished and one more round of wine was served, they readied themselves for business.

"Now that the frivolous part of this evening is finally ended," Severus said with the typical scowl of his classroom persona, causing chuckles and grins around the table. "I hope we can move on to the important things. I have work waiting."

"Who are we not to oblige our most gracious host," Professor McGonagall answered mockingly and he sneered at her, causing even more chuckles.

"Headmaster" Hermione said, offering him the chance to take over the meeting, but he shook his head and smiled.

"It was your idea, my dear. Therefore, it is only fair that you present it."

She sighed, nodded, and with a swish of her wand, a magical projector and a white screen appeared in the room, of the same type often used in class. Her style of presentation was very different to the way she had Draco about her idea, all those weeks ago when the obliviate had finally protected his mind from intrusion.

He had been hard to convince, he remembered while she began with Voldemort's wish to kill off Harry and the power he could wield on the ancient nights. They had been sitting here, in Severus' library (whom he hadn't dared call Severus yet, although the offer had been standing a few nights).

He had known much about the powers of the element – everyone even remotely connected to Voldemort knew by heart how the Dark Lord could tap into these powers, use them as a nearly endless reservoir for his own magical strength and thus commit deeds no other wizard, not even Dumbledore, could ever hope to achieve.

The idea of a place where those powers wouldn't work, not even on the ancient nights when the elements should be strongest, had confounded him, even though the idea of a hopelessly sentimental ritual between stupid Gryffindors was quite easily to accept

And when she had told him that this place was Tintagel out of all sites, a claim she was now proving to the group around the table with a variety of charts, test results and research material that got Draco's head spinning in under a minute, had made him laugh.

Just as it produced disbelieving questions and protests now. Dumbledore had known about the plan, of course, and Snape had even went with her to Tintagel, to repeat her initial tests. But Lupin and McGonagall seemed dumbstruck. Even Harry, who had never had much education in that special field of magic, found it hard to believe that nobody would have ever noticed such a thing, it appeared.

It took the combined efforts of Severus and Hermione to silence their doubts and convince them of the tests' validity. Draco kept silent, still unused to being part of a council like this and for once quite happy to leave the stage to others. Dumbledore just sat there, watching the people around the table with twinkling, strangely hopeful eyes.

But even after the acceptance that such a thing was possible had wormed its way into their minds, they had questions. Many questions, and now Draco knew why Severus and Hermione had preferred to hold this one, smaller meeting before they presented their plan to the Inner Circle.

Everyone in this room, he realized with a bit of awe as Severus talked strategy, Lupin worried how this absence of elemental magic would interfere with some of the more powerful defence spells and McGonagall already wondered how they could transfigure rock formations into hiding places for the Order, everyone in this room was brilliant in his or her own way.

Even Harry had some expertise to contribute, both on the power of the Dark Lord and the nature of their magical connection, and for a moment, Draco felt a bit left out. But then Hermione took his hand for a moment and smiled, and Lupin asked him about the way old pureblood families thought about Tintagel.

"What if Voldemort checks for elemental magic there, too?" McGonagall finally asked when all other questions seemed answered, her eyes glittering with fascination and, Draco realized with surprise, a new hope. "Won't he notice something is wrong and change the plan to another place?"

"It is highly unlikely that he would check the elemental magic there," Hermione answered. "But if he does, we will have something waiting for him. Severus and I," She nodded to the Spymaster. "Have developed a spell to mask and change magical signals. It is based on a cloaking spell that adds elements to a person's magical signature. We have been able to store this spell in a catalyst, most easiest a jewel. Once the Order has finished its preparations, we will plant such jewels all over the island and they will change the results of anyone testing for elemental magic. We have worked together with Jane to make sure this works on house elf magic."

She smiled. "When Jane wears one of our stones in her pocket, she is to all magical tests a nymph far away from her birch tree."

Draco could see Severus lips twitching with amusement. He himself was far too careful to show his mirth. That elf had a nasty temper on her.

He was surprised when a glance at Severus' old clock showed him that they had been discussing for more than an hour. It had seemed like only minutes to him. But finally, they all fell silent, the plan accepted and settled in their minds.

It was time to talk about the other thing they had met to discuss – how to inform the Order about this, and how to ensure that they would win a confrontation against a hoard of Death Eaters.

Even the thought frightened Draco.

"If the Order decides to move into battle," Severus began, his voice deep and serious, changing the atmosphere in the room immediately. "We can't go on like we did before. I did already improve our network of spies and informants, broadening it so that every known sympathizer receives regular observation and more than one office in the Ministry is

listened in on, and we all worked together to develop the new Headquarters into something more efficient than Grimmauld place.

"Still, that is not enough," He paused, but Dumbledore nodded for him to continue and he obliged, grimly.

"While it was a good idea to divide the Order into our small Inner Circle, charged with tactical and strategic work and in possession of more information, and the larger Outer Circle that will be ready to fight and work for us if we call them in, we must become better prepared. We need regular fighting training for both the Outer and Inner Circle. Chosen people from the Outer Rank must be let in to our plan and protected with our Obliviate spell. And all those that will be directly involved in the first stages of the fight must undergo rigorous team training."

"What do you mean by team training?" Harry asked, but it was Hermione who answered.

"Remember when we learned in the DA how to shield each other's back?" She asked and he nodded. "This is the same, only much more complicated. Every member must know the abilities of the other, the way he reacts and the weaknesses he has. Team members must react instinctively to orders of their leader, be they verbal or nonverbal. If the leader shouts to run, the team must run, without hesitation, without doubt. If he shouts to duck, they must do so. If he says kill, it must happen."

Harry nodded, feeling a bit queasy. He had known for a long time, intellectually, that killing was exactly what awaited him in his last confrontation with Voldemort. But to hear it in such a matter of fact voice was something else entirely.

"We should also meet more often," Professor McGonagall added. "While once a week was sufficient before before, we must become quicker to react, more vigilant."

Snape nodded. "I would propose daily short meetings in the evening, only for those who are able to attend and have something to report. We can reduce such meetings to half an hour and still get more done than with the long weekly sessions.

"And we must learn everything there is to know about the Death Eater's strength," Hermione said calmly. "While I can offer numbers and personalities and a general knowledge of how they act in battle, Voldemort is too paranoid to inform even his Inner Circle fully. Tintagel doesn't make for a huge battlefield. We should know every wand, every battle robe and every enemy that's on this island, or the scales may fall to the wrong side. We must also fix a detailed plan of action and practise it until we can work every step in our sleep."

Lupin cleared his throat, not meeting the eyes of anyone in the room.

"The initial plan was for Harry, Hermione _and _Ron to bond," He began, hesitation in his voice. Draco could see that Severus' face turned absolutely expressionless in a heartbeat while Harry paled at the mentioning of his former friend. _We must work at controlling his skin colour_, Draco thought distractedly. _This simply does't do._

"Shouldn't we try to talk to Ron again?" Lupin continued, aware of the change in atmosphere but not willing to let it drop. "He would play an important role, and we could need every hand out there."

He hesitated. "I know that he hasn't been fair to you, Hermione," He then tried. "But couldn't you speak to him? You have been friends for so long…"

The decided shake of Hermione's head stopped him.

"A talk between Ron and me would most likely end with his corpse lying at my feet," She answered lightly, but the cold steel in her eyes told everyone just how serious she was. "He is impulsive, stubborn and prejudiced. He would be a danger to everyone working with him, and I am very tempted to become a danger to him at the moment. So don't talk to me about Ronald Weasley, unless you wish for some very foul language and a dead Gryffindor, which is nothing he wouldn't deserve."

Amazement descended on the small group around the dinner table. Lupin, McGonagall, even Dumbledore were staring at Hermione in silent shock. _They haven't told them,_ Draco realized suddenly, _Only Harry and me know what the weasel did to them. And they are not willing to talk about it now. _

It was strange how her words mirrored her faked outbreak earlier that day. _She said the same things about me, not four hours ago_, Draco thought. But with him, during the Order meeting, it had been the tantrum of a spoiled child, the hysterics of an adolescent. This was the statement of a grown woman. Of a killer. And though searching, disbelieving eyes were touching her from around the table, she didn't lower her head, nor led the determination in her face waver for an instance.

"Hermione," Lupin finally said. "I… I must admit that I'm surprised! I know Ron misbehaved badly, but how in the world could you think about…"

Draco could see Hermione and Severus share a quick glance, but it was Harry who decided.

"Last weekend," He said, his eyes darting towards the two but finding no expression whatsoever in their faces. "Last weekend, Ron broke into Hermione's room and stole her pensieve. He watched it and he bragged about it in front of me."

Draco could hear McGonagall take a hissing breath, but his eyes were on Severus who had lowered his eyes to the table. _Don't tell them what he saw, or that he showed it to Severus,_ He wanted to tell Harry, but he needn't have worried.

"The ensuing confrontation between Hermione and him was… nasty. I'm surprised that she didn't beat him up completely, honestly," Harry continued. "So the way I see it, Ron is lost to us at the moment. He vandalized her room, stole from her, risked blowing her cover and at the end he had still not understood a thing. He believes this is about house rivalries, and about friendships. He's not ready to go to battle."

Draco turned towards the Headmaster, whose keen eyes tried to penetrate the faces of Hermione and Snape but seemed to find nothing. His gaze was very sharp as it rested on Harry, but even the notoriously obvious Gryffindor gave nothing away at all.

_I taught him well_, Draco thought and felt a moment of smug satisfaction before the seriousness of the situation descended on him again.

"I see," Dumbledore finally said, all his concentration on Harry, Hermione and Severus. _He probably wants to know what was in this pensieve, and why it prompted the resigning of his Potions Master_.

"Under these circumstances, I must agree with Miss Granger. If Ronald comes to us, showing willingness to help, we will not send him away. But we will involve no one in this fight that isn't ready for this."

Draco nearly snorted mockingly, thinking of how Harry had been thrown into all this from year one, or how he himself had been trained to be a Death Eater before he had even known they existed, but he suppressed the notion. He still didn't feel completely comfortable around these… Gryffindors, and while he knew Severus or Hermione, or even Harry would enjoy a cynical comment or two from him, he wasn't all that sure with Lupin or Dumbledore.

They all nodded to that, and even Lupin obviously couldn't find any words to defend Weasley's behaviour. _Good for him, or this could turn very ugly._

But although they soon changed the topic and both McGonagall and Lupin began to tell stories of Snape's teaching days, with Draco adding one or two anecdotes that always involved incompetent Gryffindors, the light and friendly atmosphere of before was lost.

While Jane served a last round of wine – water for Severus and Hermione – they returned to their time schedule, deciding that they would introduce their plan during the next Inner Circle meeting.

"Let me offer a toast before we end this meeting," Professor McGonagall finally said and stood, rising her glass in a gesture of respect towards Hermione. "To our lioness! May her hunt be victorious!"

Draco could see Hermione smile happily and strangely relieved as the others raised their glasses, too, and echoed the toast.

But it was the Headmaster, who, with a twinkle in his eye that showed them he had accepted whatever the future might bring for them, lifted his glass and bowed his head towards Severus and Hermione.

"To our Spymaster and his master spy!" He said, his voice rich and full. "May they live long and in peace and stand together whatever the future may bring!"

0o0o

A/N: Yet another awfully long chapter, but at least I managed one ending without a cliffhanger!

Now, people, I can happily tell you that the „big plan" will be revealed to the Order in the next chapter. The question is, do you want it layed out again, or do you understand completely what they want to do and would find this boring? Please tell me!

Sorry about the missing preview - I had some computer problems and decided to concentrate on the chapter instead of spending time in internet cafés. But I promise to answer your questions soon and there will a preview on the next chappie. Promise! Review in return?


	44. Revelations

A/N Look at that, an early update!

A short note beforehand: I asked you in the last chapter whether you wished me to once more explain the plan. The answers were very diverse, from "yes, please, in detail" to "please not, how boring". That's why I've decided on a compromise: The plan is posted in a step-by-step explanation in my forum. If you want to refresh your memory or are unsure whether you understood it completely, please go and take a look there. Also feel free to post any question you have concerning it. For those who don't want to read about it again: On with the story:

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**Revelations**

For the first time in many years, the sun rose on a school Monday without Severus. He woke when Hermione's warm body vanished from his side, instantly alert as he always was, but when she turned back to him, softly kissing his forehead and telling him to get some more sleep, he complied gratefully.

He awoke the second time to the smell of hot, black tea and the soft clapping of his door. It was eight o'clock.

It was a strange feeling, to slowly sit up in bed and reach for his morning tea, blankets and pillows pooling around him, while in less than an hour teaching would begin. Without him.

He had spent the weekend cleaning both office and classroom from his personal belongings, surprised by how many of them had accumulated over the year, and glad that he had always possessed his private lab. Otherwise, it would have been an impossible job to do.

His replacement, a young woman by the name of Kathryn Rosen, had arrived on Saturday afternoon, and she had been his other major occupation over the last two days. It had been him who had recommended her to Albus, of course. He had met her on a conference a few years back and managed to establish an infrequent correspondence. She was a brilliant brewer, though her research abilities lacked a certain intuition, and they had only been able to persuade her to take over teaching because she had just resigned from a well paid job with a company for healing potions, but still he couldn't help wondering how such a friendly, slightly nervous woman would manage his Potions classes.

He sighed, and slowly sipped his tea. It wasn't his responsibility any longer. He had demolished his fake chambers and ordered the house elves to thoroughly clean and redecorate them. He had also removed the spelled tapestry and offered it to Hermione, for her Head Girl room.

She had been delighted, of course. The tapestry would enable her to hear whenever someone knocked on the door of her Head Girl's room. She could stay with him constantly, only using her old rooms as a sort of entrance hall to his chambers, and still be always reachable for whoever wished to talk to her.

The way she had examined her rooms when they had hung up the tapestry and reactivated it, with a slight air of disgust and tension, had told him that she never again wanted to spend more time there than she had to.

His farewells to the Slytherins had hurt the most.

A part of his house had been lost to him long ago, he had always known that, and the revelation of his double agent status had alienated them even more. He had mourned for them, just as he had mourned for Theodore Nott, and when he had entered their Common Room on Tuesday evening and told them of his resignation, they had said little and withdrawn soon.

But the reaction of the rest had surprised him. A Slytherin's smile usually held more weight than a declaration of love from a Gryffindor (Hermione excluded, naturally), and he hadn't expected them to show much reaction.

When he had told them, three second years had burst into tears.

To his shock, the senior years hadn't sneered at them or told them to stop 'whining like Gryffindors', but had consoled them as well as they could and then turned to him with worry and sadness in their eyes. They had asked many questions, but not the ones he had expected concerning his replacement as Head of House, or their future position in Hogwarts. They had asked about his future, about his reasons.

One sixth year boy whom he had rescued from abusive parents a few years before had even been so bold to step forward and tell him with a very small voice that "the whole house would miss him".

He hadn't known how to react to so much emotion from his normally cool house. But he _had_ given each and every one of them the privilege to owl him about problems both private and connected with school, and had promised to 'keep an eye on them'.

His legs had felt wobbly when he had returned to his chambers, and he had told Hermione about the evening's events with so much disbelief in his voice that she had laughed. But it had been a rather teary laugh, and she had looked at him with so much pride in her eyes, pride that he could inspire his students and bind them so closely to him, that his legs had become unsteady out of another reason altogether.

A few days later, a gift for him had arrived, a wand holder made from polished ivory with beautiful silver inlays. It hadn't been accompanied by a letter or even a note, but Draco had later told them that the House had debated furiously on what to present him with. This gift, they had finally decided, was perfect: simple, expensive and exquisite.

Severus couldn't help but agree as he now glanced at the small work of art firmly situated on his night stand. It had been Hermione who had placed it there and told him to be proud, not sad. But the look in her eyes had told him how guilty she felt for taking him away from his house, knowing how much they needed him.

His tea was cold when his thoughts returned to the present. _You have too much to do for this!_ He told himself crossly and rose swiftly, taking a quick shower and putting on his customary black pants and a white shirt. He left the outer robes hanging in the wardrobe.

They were a thing of the past if he wanted to. No student had to be intimated any more. He descended the staircase and entered the kitchen, discarding the thought of breakfast and brewing another pot of tea instead.

That was another thing of the past – breakfast in the Great Hall, in midst the chaos of students and teachers. Not something he would miss, but the other things…

Angry with himself, he shrugged the thought off and concentrated on his work instead. He was preparing a list of Outer Circle members that would be useful during battle and thus should be offered the chance to attend additional strategy meetings as well as fighting practice. The Order Headquarters contained a gym that they could use for duelling and practicing the different steps of their plans, but they needed more people than could be found in the Inner Circle, and those had to be selected by their ability to fight. He rather doubted that Molly Weasley or Dedalus Diggle would be of much help during a battle against Death Eaters.

Fred and George Weasley, though, would. He thought for a moment, then added their names to the list and scribbled an additional comment behind their names. Perhaps they could be enlisted to help with the preparation, too. If he remembered the pranks they had pulled over the years, they probably knew more about cloaking and deception than most of their teachers ever would.

They would also have to begin talks with the Auror Headquarters soon. As Hermione had predicted after her little confrontation with Fudge, the aurors _had_ contacted them barely a week later. First contacts had been tentative and more than a bit paranoid, but the relationship was improving, more so after Tonks had openly revealed her member status.

Severus had barked at her for that stupidity, of course, but she had simply ignored him and told them that all of her pals in the squad had reacted with interest and acceptance. Severus was sure that more aurors would soon join their ranks.

The morning and midday passed quickly while he worked, only stopping once to warm himself some soup Jane had left in the oven for him. Hermione returned from classes sooner than he had expected.

"I heard only the best about your replacement," She greeted him happily. "The Gryffindors hate her already, and the Ravenclaws commented positively on her abilities. While the Hufflepuffs are glad she isn't as "frightening" as you, everyone is clear on the fact that she isn't half as impressive as the former Potions Master."

She grinned and he walked over to her with a smile, catching her in his arms and silencing her in his very own, unique way.

"And am I less interesting to you, now that I am no longer your teacher, Ms Granger?" He asked.

"Oh, definitely," She answered seriously. "I'm afraid we'll have to practice this a great deal before I will it will be as… satisfying." She cocked her head in a provocative gesture and he responded with a mock hurt expression. The empty feeling in his stomach, the insecurity about his decision vanished in an instant.

They spent an hour in the gym that was completely theirs again now that both Harry and Draco were members of the Order and could use the rooms there to do whatever they wanted, afterwards returning to his rooms to shower and change.

During their exercises, the conversation had taken a more serious tone, and though Hermione had tried to change topic once or twice, Severus returned to it the moment they settled down for an early dinner.

"But what if they don't accept a plan from an anonymous source?" He asked again.

"Why shouldn't they? We could always pretend that you or Dumbledore invented it."

"Don't be stupid, Hermione, it doesn't fit you," He answered seriously. "Someone must offer the plan to Voldemort in a credible way. Without your involvement, or rather that of the Master Spy, the whole idea is useless."

"I hate that title," She said quietly. "Why do they always have to choose something grand and dramatic? Spy is bad enough!"

"Hermione."

"Yes, I know," She sighed. "Though the timing is anything but ideal. They will all remember my little outburst from last week, even though I made sure to apologize to everyone of them by letter. If we could only wait another few weeks with the introduction of the plan."

"We can't," He simply answered. "We have barely seven months left till Halloween, and the Order needs time to adapt, to change, to train. We can't spring this on them a few weeks beforehand. They are civilians now. What we will need, out there at Tintagel, will be warriors."

"And what if we revealed only parts of the plan? The bits involving me we could add later…"

"You can't hide forever who you really are, Hermione," He warned her, but his voice was warm, and caring. "Everything you may think of will only prolong the deception. And the longer we wait, the firmer we fix the impression of the "harmless Hermione" in their minds, the harder it will be for them to accept you."

"I know," She agreed tiredly. "And the time will come when they will have to know. But not now, Severus. Not yet. So much is going on at the moment. I have little strength left as it is. And the Order won't react well to this special revelation. As long as I can avoid a confrontation, I will keep silent. And I ask you to keep silent, too."

"You know that I would never take that decision from you," He replied, softly touching her cheek. "But you should prepare. When Albus and Potter inform them about the plan, they will demand answers. And I don't believe that they will accept a risky plan coming from an unknown source. Moody has been discontent ever since the Master Spy was first mentioned, and it is likely that he will use this as a chance to unmask you."

"If it takes the truth about me to convince them of the plan, I will reveal myself," She said, leaning into his touch, her eyes half closed with weariness. "But only then. I just hope…"

A screeching sound interrupted them. Their heads swivelled around and they rose in synchrony to walk over to the row of magical tapestries, one leading to the Order Headquarters, one to a safe house near London and one to Hermione's room in Gryffindor tower. It was this last tapestry that glowed golden and projected the awful sound.

"An owl," Hermione said, already placing her hand on the tapestry and fixing her eyes on it. "I take care of it. 'O Rose, thou art sick!'" She announced to a chuckle of Severus and stepped through.

But when she returned a moment later, her mood had changed completely.

"There will be a revel tonight," She told him, clutching the letter in her fist like a worm she didn't want to set free. "And… Lucius wrote to me that he wants to meet me beforehand."

Sitting in his favourite armchair, Severus grew very still while Hermione just stood in the middle of the room, motionless, her eyes fixed on him with an unreadable expression.

"I see," He finally said, his mouth suddenly dry and his voice hoarse. "When will you have to leave?"

"Soon." She hesitated for a moment, then walked over to the mantelpiece and silently poured whisky in a crystal glass.

"You shouldn't…" He began, but she interrupted him with a ghost of a smile.

"I know," She answered. "It's for you."

She crossed the room until she stood to his left and handed him the glass, her left hand still a fist around the letter.

He took the whisky, but instead of raising it to his mouth, he stretched out his hand and touched her arm, trying to convey trust and strength although he didn't feel it.

"We knew this would happen," He said quietly and felt her nod shakily.

He looked up to her and into her eyes, but for the first time in weeks, he found the entrance to her mind barred by walls of steel. His confusion must have shown on his face, for she suddenly sat down opposite to him on the sofa and fixed him with a sad look.

"I'm sorry, Severus," She said. "But I don't want you to see what's in there at the moment. Believe me, it is better for us both."

This time it was he who nodded shakily, cursing himself for the weakness he felt, for the frozen weight of his body and the weariness that hung over him like a cloud.

They _had_ known this would happen. But they had both chosen to ignore it, had hoped that somehow they would be spared. Their love this past week had been like a dream, a balloon of safety and happiness. He had known it would burst eventually. But he had had no idea how much it would hurt when reality, that sharp needle, would destroy their dream. How naked and helpless he would feel.

Lucius Malfoy had called for her, and like the obedient slave she was, she would come to him, to let him use and abuse her. Anger rose in him, but on her face he saw nothing but silent resignation and mounting worry, and that view gave him the strength to bury his wrath under layers of calm.

"It is alright, love," He told her and somehow even managed a small smile. "Don't worry about me. I will be waiting for you when you return, and nothing will have changed. Just keep yourself safe."

He could see that she didn't believe him, not really, but she nodded nonetheless.

"I love you, Severus," She whispered. But she didn't touch him when she rose to descend the winding staircase, and when she returned after a few minutes, her black Death Eater cloak billowing around her and the invisibility cloak ready to be thrown over it, she said nothing, just sending him a long, unreadable look before she left his chambers through the tapestry.

He kept his face passive, his frame relaxed until her silhouette had vanished. Only then did he let go. His face twisted into a grimace of hate and pain, he grabbed the crystal glass and hurled it against the fireplace, where it exploded into a thousand, needle sharp pieces.

"Damn you, Lucius Malfoy," He shouted into the silence. "Damn you to hell!"

0o0

It was nearing midnight when she returned, and he was lying on his bed, eyes wide open, staring into the darkness.

He could hear the door to her room open and, a few minutes later, the sound of the shower. She took long to clean herself, and more than once was he tempted to walk over to her room and see how she was doing, but he reigned himself in. She needed her time.

When she finally knocked quietly and opened his door, she was in her pyjamas, her hair braided, her eyes huge and tired. He could see traces of a bruise on her left cheek, but otherwise she seemed fine.

Noticing that she was still standing in his doorframe, as if unsure what to do, he silently padded the mattress to his left and she walked over to him, still not speaking a word. Seeing her climb onto the bed, he too rose into a sitting position until they were opposite each other, their faces nearly touching.

"How are you, love?" He finally whispered, his voice silky and tender, and she closed her eyes in answer as if suddenly overwhelmed with emotions.

"Tired," She finally said. "Tired and sad. They killed three women tonight."

"Will you show me?" He asked. Her eyes flew open instead of an answer and searched his face intently.

"There was nothing important enough to…" She began, but he shook his head.

"Don't," He whispered, cupping her cheeks with his hands and feeling wetness on his fingers. "Don't try to protect me. I can handle it. Don't try to hide it. Don't feel ashamed."

He locked his gaze with hers, his hands still caressing her face, and slowly he felt the walls of steel protecting her mind slide back. She let him in hesitatingly and he waited in the forefront of her mind until he sensed she was ready.

When they had finished, his eyes were burning with her unshed tears.

"I love you," He told her firmly and saw her trembling in answer. "And whatever happens, you are beautiful to me. You are the purest being I know."

Slowly, without sudden movements, he lay back on the bed and stretched his arm out so that it covered the pillow to his left. She followed as slowly, her body tense and her eyes wide open, until her head touched his arm.

He didn't move, just looked out into the darkness as he had the many hours of her absence. After what felt like an eternity, he noticed her relax. Slowly, her body moved closer to his and she tilted her head to the side, resting her cheek on his biceps. Still he waited, not speaking, not moving, and after half an hour of silent breathing, she lay curled up against him, relaxing as her body remembered their closeness while the memories of Lucius Malfoy vanished into the dark caves of her mind.

Only then did he move his arm to embrace her while he used his other hand to magically cover them with a blanket.

"We can do this," He whispered into the darkness, feeling her warmth against his body. "It will never be easy. But we can do this."

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"We have a plan," Dumbledore announced the next Friday evening.

"Well, that's good to hear," Bill answered, who had returned from a business trip for Gringotts two nights before and had now resumed his place in the Order. The others couldn't suppress a chuckle, but the seriousness of their leader's voice and posture made the amusement die away quickly.

"What kind of plan?" Remus finally inquired after it became clear that Dumbledore wouldn't continue. He knew, of course, what was to come, but it had often been his task to break the ice in difficult situations or ask the first question, and it would look suspicious if he suddenly kept out of it.

All eyes were on Dumbledore, who sat on the front side of the table, opposite to Snape.

But it was Harry who answered.

"A plan to get rid of Voldemort, once and for all," He said, determination and authority turning his voice cold. "To take over the lead in this fight and to kill him with as little danger as possible."

He could see surprise widen the eyes of the Inner Circle. Those who had known all along what he was going to say played along perfectly. Especially Hermione, who had once more made a round of excuses before the Order meeting had started, looked at him in total confusion.

Harry knew how nervous she was about this evening. They had spent much time together over the last days, he, Dumbledore, Snape and Hermione, and he had seen how she had picked at her food, the bags under her eyes betraying how little sleep she got.

Nothing of that was visible of course, now that she wore the disguise of the harmless school girl. But he knew it nevertheless.

It had been she who had proposed for him to take the lead. It was only appropriate that the Boy Who Lived would announce the plan to end this war, she had told him, and from what he could see in the eyes fixed on him now, she had probably been right. Still, he felt awkward as the centre of these people's attention, and was all too glad when the Headmaster took over again, as they had agreed on during one of their meetings.

Swiftly, he gave them an introductory talk about Voldemort's strength and weaknesses, the main one sitting with them around the table. He then proceeded to explain their plan, step by step, using the magical ceiling of the meeting room to show first the rough landscape of Tintagel, then the various test results and diagrams. He even produced one of the charmed jewels Snape and Hermione had come up with to cloak a magical signature and offered it to anyone who wished to examine it.

Harry noticed that he had included every useful comment and suggestion they had come up with during dinner last week, as well as some details he had never heard before. All in all, the whole thing sounded impressive, safe and professional. Even if he hadn't known about it before, he would be convinced now.

It seemed that many Order members agreed with him, for there was much thoughtful nodding around the table. Finally, the silence was broken.

"Who thought of this?" Tonks inquired, awe in her voice. "Who the hell had such an idea? And why haven't we heard about it before?"

Instead of answering, Dumbledore exchanged a short glance with Snape. This seemed to be all Moody needed to know.

"It was the Master Spy, wasn't it?" He asked, and in the wake of his question all sounds in the huge room faded away.

"Yes," Dumbledore nodded. "The idea originates from our Master Spy, but I can assure you that both Severus and I worked through the whole plan and can confirm every single aspect. The bonding ceremony exists, and both of us have been at Tintagel to test the inherent magic. Our spy has by now reached a level of trust that will allow him to introduce the idea to Voldemort without the danger of not being believed, and Harry is willing to participate as well as Miss Granger. The plan is fool proof."

"A plan stands and falls with the people that execute it," Harry heard Bill murmur from his place.

"Which is why we will start planning and training now if the Order agrees on this plan of action," Snape answered smoothly. "We will leave nothing to chance or luck. And if we find in the course of the planning that we miscalculated something, nothing will prevent us to abandon it."

_There you are_, Harry thought, satisfied. He himself couldn't think of a single question or doubt that spoke against their plan. The question of the Master Spy had been addressed and dealt with, and if something went wrong they could always back out. Now they would nod, and accept, and then they could start working.

But he had underestimated the Order's inventiveness. It was Molly Weasley who opened the cross fire with a criticism all too typical for her.

"This plan is unacceptable, Albus," She said decidedly. "It would mean to use the children as bait, and I will not let that happen! Harry has risked his life often enough! I will not participate in a plan that endangers him and Hermione!"

"We are of age, Mrs Weasley," Harry reminded her gently. _Not to mention that we are sitting right in front of you while you talk about us._ "And we are involved anyway. Voldemort is out to get me, and Hermione is a muggleborn. If we are willing to take the risk, you should allow us our own decision."

"Once we graduate from Hogwarts," Hermione added in her school girl voice. "We won't be safe anyway."

"But how do we know that this spy doesn't plan to really lure them out there and then kidnap them? It happened once before, during the tournament, and I will never see Harry in such danger again!"

The tournament. Harry suddenly felt cold as he remembered the tug behind his navel. For one moment he could hear a cold, hissing voice, calling "Kill the spare!", but then he felt Hermione's hand touching his arm, and the feeling catapulted him back into reality.

"This situation is different," He answered, his voice strong. "We will be prepared, and we will know exactly what to do. We arrive there first, and nothing we will use will be touched by Death Eaters. We can even wear emergency portkeys, so that we can easily escape if something goes wrong.

"You showed us that cloaking jewel," Moody now said, more or less ignoring Harry's words. _There goes the authority as Boy Who Lived, _He thought resignedly. "How can you be sure that this spy hasn't cloaked the magic of Tintagel beforehand? Then Voldemort could arrive, command his full power and kill us all before we even had time to notice him!"

"Or even if he does know about the lack of elemental magic," Tonks added, this once as paranoid as Moody. "If he knows we try to ambush him he could easily turn the place into a death trap. Or send nothing but a stunner bomb and knock us all out."

"Dear friends, I can once more assure you that our spy is absolutely trustworthy! He would never betray us to Voldemort! I can only repeat…"

While Dumbledore tried to soothe the tension that was building in the room, Harry gazed around the table in shock. How swiftly the atmosphere had changed! Five minutes ago, he had been absolutely sure of their success! And now more and more voices were joining the chorus of mistrust, leaving no room for Professor McGonagall, the Headmaster or Remus to even argue.

Finally, he understood why Hermione had been so nervous. He turned his head around to her and saw her calm, expressionless eyes fixed on their Spymaster, who had leaned back in his seat and was completely ignoring the chaos around him. While he watched, he saw her shoulders slump in defeat and his eyes narrow in worry.

And he realized that both had given up any hope of success for tonight.

Even Dumbledore, optimistic as he was by nature, seemed to falter in the face of the storm that had built around him.

"As your friend," He began once more, so much authority in his voice that even the heated debate between Mrs Weasley and Remus stopped. "And as the one who led this Order not only against the first rising of Voldemort, but already against Grindelwald so many years ago, as an old man with a world of experience and great hopes for the future, I ask you once more: Will you accept this plan? You have my word that it is safe, you have my word that everyone informed of it is trustworthy. I swear by my magic and soul that it is no plot to betray us and that Voldemort knows nothing of it."

He paused, drawing a deep breath and letting his old, wise eyes travel across the table.

"Will you accept this plan, friends?"

"No."

The word cut into the silence like a diamond into glass, cold, hard and without room for questions or interpretations. It was Moody who had said it, but as Harry moved his eyes from face to face, from Order member to member, he saw the word mirrored on too many faces to let it pass.

"I don't like to say this, Dumbledore," Moody continued, his voice rough and deep. "But this is too great a risk to accept the word of a stranger for it. You and Snape may know him and be satisfied, but before I risk our lives and the outcome of this war on his word, I want to meet this Master Spy. I want to look into his eyes and question him under Veritaserum."

"I can assure you that the Master Spy has both mine and Severus' complete trust," Dumbledore said, but even as he tried to turn the tide, Harry saw in his eyes that he knew this wouldn't help. It was too late. The dice had fallen. "We would follow him blindly, and so would you, if you knew him."

"But we don't," Moody answered. "And that is the main point here, isn't it? Why do you keep his identity from us? We all knew about Severus here spying, and nothing leaked out for years. Why do you not trust us with this spy? Or is there something about him you would not want us to know? Is it someone whose loyalties we might question?"

"He has done more for our cause than any other member of this Inner Circle, save perhaps Potter," Snape, taking word for the first time since the discussion had begun. His voice was calm and velvety, with a nearly hypnotic quality. Harry didn't know whether this was Legilimency or just good rhetorics, but he felt that he wanted to believe everything this voice told him. "The only thing he has requested in return is that we keep his privacy. Is that too much asked from someone who risks his life for us every day? Can we not grant that one wish? Or is Dumbledore's word not good enough for you?"

"If this were just about me, we wouldn't be having this conversation," Moody grumbled. "I would follow both you and Dumbledore blindly into fire and ice. But this is not just about me, or us. This may very well be the last chance we have in this war, and – sorry Albus – our venerable leader has been wrong before. Let me only drop a few names: Quirrell. Lockhart. Barty Crouch Junior."

"He is right," Arthur Weasley agreed hesitatingly, his face crunched up in a grimace that told them all how hard it was to criticize his friends this way, but how serious he was nevertheless. "This decision is too important not to take every possible safety measure. We would be risking everything we have done so far."

"Not to mention two innocent young lives," Mrs Weasley piped in.

"I am sorry, Albus," Kingsley Shacklebolt, who was famous for thinking long and hard before he talked. If he had decided against them, too, there was no way to tip the balance. No way but one. "But I think we all agree. If we don't get to know this master spy personally, we won't even consider your plan."

Desperately, Harry tried to think of something, some plot that would make them withdraw their demand, some ploy that would divert the attention from the master spy, but before his brain had cleared enough to find a single thought, he felt the air move beside him.

Hermione had risen from her chair. Her eyes darted through the room, meeting Severus' and Albus' face, then Draco's on the other side of the table. He could feel her nervousness, but when she spoke, her voice was firm and calm.

"It's me," She said, and all sound in the room stopped. "I am the master spy."

A/N: The password to Hermione's room: „O Rose, thou art sick!", is a quote from William Blake's poem „The sick rose" and alludes in this case to the desecration of her rooms by Ron. If you are interested, I will happily post the whole poem in my forum. Just let me know!


	45. The Girl Who Spied

A/N: Even faster than I thought, but who could withstand your pleas... Two things before we start: 

First: This chapter is dedicated to my **brother**, who tomorrow finishes his school-leaving exams with marks worthy of our Master Spy! He is my Harry, my Draco and my Hermione all wrapped in one. There's no one better than you, Jean!

Second: You rock, people! For the last chapter, I have gotten reviews from all over the world, and the sheer grandness and generosity of you all takes my breath away. That's why I love the concept of fanfiction – because of all you wonderful people that make it happen!

Right now, on to the story...

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**The Girl Who Spied**

_Hermione had risen from her chair. Her eyes darted through the room, meeting Severus' and Albus' face, then Draco's on the other side of the table. He could feel her nervousness, but when she spoke, her voice was firm and calm. _

"_It's me," She said, and all sound in the room stopped. "I am the Master Spy."_

0o0

For a moment, the group around the table seemed to freeze, and Harry found himself seriously wondering whether Dumbledore or Snape had put a _Petrificus Totalus_ on the whole Inner Circle, but then Moody cleared his throat angrily, and the spell was broken.

"Really now, little girl," He grumbled in his deep, rolling baritone. "This isn't funny. Not funny at all. If you think this is the time for jokes, you better get back to your room and play with dolls. We are talking war here."

Harry didn't know what reaction Moody had expected from Hermione to these words, but it certainly wasn't the slightly mocking way she tilted her head towards Dumbledore. "Headmaster," She said, and not only Harry noticed that her voice had become deeper, gained self-assurance and a richness in tone it had never sported before.

But her voice wasn't the only thing that had changed. She seemed to stand a little straighter than before, gone were the nervous movements of the school girl and the innocent brown eyes, always widened in surprise or interest. In the blink of an eye, she had matured into a woman with the grace of a cat.

Dumbledore sighed, and, as Hermione had changed only moments before, so did he, but it was a change for the worse. He looked old now, worn and worried.

"She is telling the truth, Alastor," He said. "Hermione Granger is and has been our Master Spy for the last seven months."

"But… this isn't possible," Mrs Weasley, shrill with surprise and sudden fear. "Hermione is just a girl! She couldn't possibly…"

"She is much more than just a girl, Molly," Dumbledore disagreed, his voice tired. "She is the most cunning and able spy we have ever had. Her knowledge about the Inner Circle and Voldemort himself surpasses even that of Severus and me. She has led us to many victories over the last months. We couldn't do without her, as all of you," He let his critical eye wander over every person in the room. "Said yourself on more than one occasion. She deserves your gratitude."

"She is a muggleborn, a young girl, best friend of Harry Potter," Tonks nearly shouted, her hair turned white and her face suddenly that of a small child. "Even if they had considered taking her in, she wouldn't have survived the first week! It is impossible!"

"The evidence stands before you, Nymphadora," Dumbledore answered, and it was a sign of how shocked and outraged Tonks was that she didn't even comment the use of her surname.

"Show them the Miss Granger," Dumbledore sighed after a moment of silence. "It is the only way they will believe us, I'm afraid."

It was obvious in the way she moved that Hermione didn't like this one bit, but when she had rolled up her sleeve, and raised her arm with the slithering black snake to the room, she did so without expression. Harry could hear gasps around them, shocked whispers and heavy breathing, but he was concentrating all his mind on Hermione, trying to send her strength, to show her that the reactions of all those people didn't matter. He knew that, across from the table, Draco would be doing the same.

But she didn't look at them. While her arm was stretched out towards the centre of the table, unmoving, her eyes were fixed above their heads on something only she could see.

"I understand your shock," She said slowly in that new, self-confident tone of hers. "And I understand your disbelief. I _am_ an unlikely choice for this work. But it is true nonetheless. This mark on my arm confirms it, as does the word of Professor Dumbledore. Let me assure you that he only kept my identity secret because I asked him to do it. And please accept my apology for this deception."

She let her arm sink, but kept the writhing snake exposed.

"So it _is_ you," Shacklebolt finally said after another long moment of silence, voicing the thought that was mirrored on many faces around the table, the Dark Mark leaving them no chance to ignore the truth. "Our Master Spy. An eighteen-year-old muggleborn girl in her seventh year at Hogwarts. The best friend of Harry Potter and a Gryffindor."

From his tone it was clear that he found the last fact most difficult to believe and Harry marvelled that these people could think in House clichés even at such a moment.

"Yes." The answer was clear, controlled and without further expression.

"You are a Death Eater." Still Kingsley, still with a mixture of shock and disbelief.

"Of the Inner Circle," She confirmed.

"You warned us about that ambush six weeks ago. You gave us information on attacks. You trapped MacNair and told us that Voldemort wanted to merge with the Order of Jeanne D'Arc."

"Yes."

"And Dumbledore knew it was you all the time."

"I informed him the moment I was marked."

Shacklebolt nodded, accepting her answers. Nobody spoke. Still with shell-shocked expressions on their faces, the Order members seemed willing to leave the interrogation to the auror for the moment. But Shacklebolt didn't seem interested in further questioning. Instead, he turned around to Dumbledore

"So you let a girl, a child, walk into danger to better our chances," he said, and Harry had never seen him so angry before. "I always knew you liked to manipulate people, but this goes too far!"

"Hermione is her own person, and can make her own decisions," Harry protested, anger rising in him once again about the way the auror once more ignored his friend. "Nobody manipulated her!"

"In fact you could say it was the other way round," Dumbledore added, a slight smile lightening his face. "She has had me dancing to her tune for many months now." The look he sent to Hermione was full of pride, and love.

"So you knew of this," Moody had turned to Harry, and he felt himself under the full strength of the magical eye. "Who else?"

"I did," Professor McGonagall said, her voice crisp and clear like a winter morning. "And let me say that Hermione has done incredible things. To underestimate her might be the last thing you do in your life."

"I knew, too," Remus added. "I found out together with Ron and Harry, and though I was as shocked as you in the beginning, I have seen many things since then, and I would never dare question her abilities."

"But she's just a girl," Mrs Weasley could be heard again, her eyes full of tears as she leaned against the side of her husband for support. Mr Weasley had put his arm around her, but his eyes were fixed on Hermione, who was still standing, calmly, as if nothing happening in this room could even touch her.

"I knew about it, too," Draco added quietly. "And she was the one who convinced me to go to Dumbledore with my father's letters."

"And you, Severus," Arthur Weasley asked suddenly, turning towards their Spymaster. "Did you, too, know who took over your spying?"

"Yes," Snape answered, his voice calm and relaxed, his eyes resting on Hermione. "I have known for many months now."

"And why haven't you stopped her," Mrs Weasley demanded. "You know how dangerous it is!"

"A simple reason, Molly," Snape said, and a small smile curled around his lips. "She is too brilliant to let herself be stopped by anyone else. And she is a better spy already than I ever was."

That simple statement, uttered in a tone that allowed no discussion, plunged the room into silence again.

"How did you do it?" Tonks asked finally, a new tone in her voice. Harry could sense curiosity, awe and a little fear. "How did you convince them of your loyalty? You are a muggleborn and Harry's friend!"

"Patience, hard work and a good acting talent," Hermione answered, and, as if she considered some part of the discussion finished, sat down again. "It isn't hard with someone who has an ego as inflated as Voldemort's to convince him that you finally realized his natural superiority."

She sighed. "Look, I'm sorry I kept this from all of you." Harry couldn't help but notice how calm she said this in comparison to that night, long ago, when he, Ron and Remus had found out. "But I foresaw these complications and knew this wouldn't help anybody. My information isn't worth a penny more just because it is me who collected it. Neither are the spells you use to protect your minds or the warding system I helped to design."

"Those spells were from you?" Tonks asked, the awe in her voice more apparent than before. "But I thought you developed them, Severus!"

"Hermione and I are working together quite well," Snape answered calmly. "We designed the ward system and the map ceiling together. The triggered Obliviate however was her project almost entirely. I merely lent a hand with the potion."

"Are you trying to tell us that the girl is a Legilimens, Severus?" Shacklebolt asked sharply.

"She masters the arts of the mind perfectly. Well enough to fool the Dark Lord. And she is not simply a "girl". You had better remember that," A hint of sharpness had crept into the Spymaster's voice. "She has done…"

"Severus," Hermione said quietly, and to the utter surprise of most in the room, he fell silent immediately. Even Dumbledore looked a bit shocked, but it was Tonks that finally connected the dots.

"Just a moment," She said, slowly and with a dangerous undertone. "You have treated her like an idiot ever since she entered the Order. Only last week did she protest quite emotionally against Malfoy's inclusion in the Inner Circle. And now you're telling us she is brilliant and listening to what she says? What is going on here?"

"Severus and Hermione only did what was necessary to keep her cover," Dumbledore answered quickly.

"No," Moody disagreed roughly. "What you did was fool us, clear and simple. You wormed your obedient little spy into our Circle and let her hoodwink us. Only last week did you use her to gain Malfoy's membership when all signs stood against it. You have manipulated us with her help!"

Snape scowled, and for the moment Harry expected him to break into an angry tirade about Order know-it-alls that kept him from the important work, but he visibly pulled himself together.

"Don't be silly, Alastor," He said patiently, but with a hint of anger. "We are the Order of the Phoenix, and not easily manipulated. Yes, we put on an act, but only to protect her. When Potter decided to enter the Order it would have looked suspicious if none of his friends had accompanied him. She decided to keep her spying a secret, and after the way you all behaved today, I can understand her only too well. Her work is important and dangerous, and the least thing Albus and I could do was to respect her wishes and act accordingly."

"And what about last week?" Moody asked again, the anger in his voice far more apparent.

"Before Draco went to the Headmaster," Harry answered quickly. "Before he became my friend, he was the friend of Hermione. They have worked and talked together ever since the end of our fifth year. He has helped her with becoming a spy and has supported her ever since. But we couldn't tell you that, not without revealing that she was the Master Spy. I am sorry."

From the corner of his eye, Harry saw Draco nod his approval. Better Harry admitted to that little act than their Spymaster or Hermione herself. Perhaps this would even manage to divert the attention from them.

But again, Harry had not considered the Order members' stubborn streak.

"But why shouldn't we know?" Tonks asked. "Protection can't be the reason – you knew that the Remembernothing spell would keep you safe! Why didn't you trust us?"

_At least she's talking with Hermione and not about her as if she were a thing,_ Harry thought darkly, shooting angry glances at Moody and Shacklebolt.

To his left, Hermione stirred in her seat and he wondered how she would answer. She had been surprisingly passive over the last minutes, letting Snape, Dumbledore and even Harry explain her behaviour. That was probably the wisest thing though. It was hard enough to theoretically accept that a harmless girl had suddenly turned into the most ruthless, dangerous person in the room without her taking the lead of the conversation as well.

But she couldn't evade this question. And it was the question that could turn everyone to her side – or against her.

"It wasn't a question of trust, Tonks," She finally said quietly. "I was never afraid you would betray me. But I didn't even tell Harry or Ron! Only Draco knew about it because I needed his contact, and Dumbledore to whom I reported. I never wanted this information to spread."

"Why not?" Shacklebolt asked. "If you did what you claimed, if your intention was honourable, you should have been willing to tell us. Much would have been easier."

"Look at each other," She suddenly said, seemingly out of the blue. "Look at the expression on your faces. What do you see?"

Following her advice, Harry saw that most of the Order members had disregarded it. Their eyes were fixed on Hermione instead,

"Shock," She answered for them after a moment. "Irritation. A growing disgust. Alienation."

She paused and sighed. "I consider many of you as my family. Ever since I left for Hogwarts, the muggle world was foreign to me. My parents don't know me half as well as Mrs Weasley, my uncles haven't seen half as much of me as Remus or Professor McGonagall, and my cousins and childhood friends are strangers to me if I compare them with Harry or Draco. You," She paused and let her gaze travel around the table once more, meeting every face, every suspicious and confused look.

When her eyes lingered on Harry, she curled the corners of her mouth upwards into a little smile, looking terribly sad and tired. "You are all I have. My family. My friends. I became what I am today to protect our world, this magical world I have the privilege to be a part of. And yet, everyone who found out about it reacted with shock and disgust.

"Severus hated me for it in the beginning. Harry treated me as if I was a stranger first. Ron turned away from me," She continued, her eyes fixed on Mr and Mrs Weasley and nodded slightly when they paled. "Yes. That was the reason why he stopped speaking to us. He called me a "Slytherin slut" and treated me as if I had betrayed our friendship."

A lock had escaped her braid and she flicked it back with a less than steady hand. While he watched her expression and listened to her perfect speech, he wondered how much of this was real and how much calculated.

But perhaps such distinctions couldn't be applied to Hermione any longer. Whether the hurt in her voice, the pain in her eyes was real or reproduced, he knew that she had felt all these things before. He knew that her words were true. What did it matter if she enhanced them with a role that came natural to her?

"It is hard to do these things," She continued when no one broke the silence. "You all know enough about Voldemort and his minions to realize what being a muggleborn among them means. What being a Death Eater means. And it is even harder to talk about it. It shames me."

For the first time since she had begun, she lowered her head and averted her gaze. "I am not proud of what I do, of what I have become. It takes all my courage to go there, all my strength to survive. Was it so wrong if I wanted to keep it as far away from my life as possible? When I returned to Hogwarts, when I had given my report, I could return to be Hermione, the slightly over eager student and best friend of Harry. I didn't want to be the Master Spy that risked his life every other day, nor the Slytherin in Gryffindor disguise.

"I wanted you to stay my friends," She was now speaking very quietly, and Harry had to strain his ears to understand her. "To talk to me without wondering what I did last night. Was that too much to ask? Was it manipulation to be the person I wanted to be around you? I'm sorry if it was."

She paused again, and when she continued, it was clear that this would be her last words.

"But at the time, it was the only thing I could do if I wanted to survive."

She fell silent and bit her lip in apprehension. Without even meaning to, Harry reached for her hand and took it, softly stroking the palm with his thumb. No one spoke. It seemed as if no one dared even breathe.

Finally, she raised her head again, and her brown eyes were burning as she met Tonks shocked gaze.

"Does that answer satisfy you, Tonks?" She asked quietly.

Slowly, her face pale and drawn, Tonks nodded. And so did Mrs Weasley, Bill, Arthur and Remus.

It was Dumbledore who finally broke the silence.

"Well then," He announced, the brightness of his voice a stark contrast to the sorrowful faces around him. "I believe that we all consider Miss Granger to be a trustworthy source. Again I stress that her plan has been cross-checked by Severus and me several times, and that it is flawless. There shouldn't be any further problems now, I presume. So why don't we…"

"Not so fast, Albus," Came the growling voice of Moody, and Harry saw Tonks, Shacklebolt and the Weasleys whip their heads around in irritation, as if Moody had uttered a particularly foul insult. "There are a lot of things that don't seem to fit here. Before I accept this so-called Master Spy and her plan, I need more information."

"What information?" Dumbledore asked, a bit flustered.

"About your little girl spy there. How can you be sure that she isn't under Imperius, or that her loyalties have indeed changed? Her ability to survive among the Death Eaters is suspicious to say the lest. Who tells us that she doesn't enjoy her role a bit too much?"

"This suspicion really goes too far, Moody," Arthur Weasley interrupted, real indignation in his voice. "I agreed with you when her identity was unknown, but Hermione has practically been part of our family for seven years! Apart from the fact that she's Harry's best friend and a muggleborn, we know her too well to believe something bad of her!"

"You know her well, eh?" Moody grumbled back, his face distorted in his personal version of a mocking smile. "And that's why she managed to fool you for the last month? You have seen her act like a ten-year-old, you have seen her produce hysterics and cower in fear before Severus, and you believed it all, too."

Mrs Weasley opened her mouth to protest loudly, then realized that Moody was telling nothing but the truth, and closed it again, thoughtful and confused.

"We have been far too trusting," Moody continued. "From now on, I want my questions answered, to my complete satisfaction, or I will not agree to anything."

"What are your questions, then?" Hermione asked, no emotion colouring her voice.

Turning back to her, Moody let out a growl that would have made Harry more than nervous, had it been directed towards him. Hermione didn't even blink.

"For once," The old auror began. "I want to know what exactly you did to become a Death Eater. And I want to know _why_ you did it."

_No_, Harry thought. _Not that. Don't make her answer that._ His eyes met Draco's and he saw the same worry mirrored in them. With the instincts of a good persecutor, Moody had chosen the things that would hurt her most to speak about. But Hermione didn't let on.

She took a deep breath. "I would rather not talk about these things tonight," She then said clearly.

"You owe us answers to these questions," Moody insisted, leaning forward in his chair and fixing his magical eye on her. "I want to hear them before I decide about that plan of yours."

"Why do I owe you an answer?" She asked back. "I answered more than one question tonight, and I am willing to swear a wizard's oath that I am and always was loyal to this council, but ask no more from me!"

"This is not the reaction of a loyal Circle member," He taunted her and the tension in the room increased. From the corner of his eye, Harry could see Snape slowly straighten in his chair, and he knew that their Spymaster was readying himself for an attack, magical or verbal. If Harry interpreted his thunderous expression correctly, he wouldn't let this interrogation go on for much longer.

"Do you think you can fool us again, Albus?" Moody now asked, turning away from Hermione as if she wasn't worth his notice. "You risk the fate of our world for the mad ideas of a little girl that…"

"I. Am. Not. A little girl," The voice cut through his words like a knife through butter. "And if I were you, Moody, I would be careful with my judgments. You never know how they can backfire."

Harry had to suppress the need to duck away from the sudden blaze of power to his left. It seemed that Hermione had finally tired of Moody. Gone was the passive, slightly sad girl. In his place now sat a woman of authority, her voice commanding attention and obedience. Harry saw Tonks' eyes widen in surprise and Shacklebolt straighten like Snape had done a few seconds before.

But whatever it was that suddenly filled the room and told them to tread carefully, Moody didn't seem to feel it.

"What, is that a threat, _little girl_," He mocked, ignoring the outstretched hand of Dumbledore that commanded silence. "What in the world could you possibly threaten me with, you Gryffindor child? How do you want to stop me? "

Suddenly, Hermione smiled and Mrs Weasley gasped in shock. Hermione's eyes seemed to darken until they were nearly as black and piercing as Snape's and she leaned back in her chair, resting her head against it in a strangely sensual gesture.

"Now that is a question I don't mind to answer," She said, no, purred, her fingers playing with the stray lock.

s

"I suppose you are not interested in the more conventional methods that are at the disposal of any Death Eater, Moody? No, I didn't think so," She smiled again. The room was silent enough to hear a fleck of dust drop to the ground. "You think yourself safe from curses and hexes, don't you? You think yourself invulnerable and above a chit of a girl like me?"

She leaned forward abruptly, the sudden movement causing more than one Order member to flinch backwards in surprise. Still, Moody was smiling condescendingly and Harry couldn't help but think that Mad-Eye was just about to commit the worst mistake of his life.

"But no one is entirely safe, Moody," Hermione considered, echoing his smile. "Especially not an ex-Ministry worker that has not always cared about protocols and procedures as meticulously as he should have. Everybody is vulnerable."

Now Moody leaned forward in his chair, too. The smile had vanished.

"What are you talking about," He barked. "I have never done anything I wouldn't admit to in broad daylight! My career has been exemplary! And I won't hear criticism from a Death Eater!"

Again, Harry could hear a gasp from across the table. But he didn't care. He was grinning so wide that his face hurt. _Oh boy, big mistake,_ He thought with more than a little satisfaction. _He won't know what hit him!_

"Exemplary career, yes," Hermione purred and traced the edge of her chair with her index finger. She didn't appear as if she had even heard the insult, rather as if the conversation bored her greatly.

"Then what about that raid in Knockturn Alley, six years ago? You don't know what I am talking about?" She smiled at the look of worry that had darted across his face. "Or would you rather not speak about that tonight? No matter, I will answer for you. If I remember correctly, you were the one to catalogue the dark items you confiscated. And didn't your one eye – you had lost the other one a few months earlier, suddenly fall on a little box, a box that held a certain magical contraption you became famous for? Didn't you…"

"I won't listen to this nonsense!" Moody suddenly thundered, his magical eye twitching wildly and his face more nervous than Harry had ever seen him before. "I refuse to accept this plan and I want her out of the Inner Circle immediately!"

"It isn't polite to interrupt a woman, don't you know that, Moody?" Hermione asked pleasantly. "Or should I call you _Mad-Eye_?" She smiled again.

"Now, where was I?" She then continued. "Your eye fell on a little box that contained a magical eye, and although you knew it went against every law you had ever learned, you couldn't resist the temptation to test it, could you? And after you found out what it could do, it was so easy to hide it in your pocket and simply not mention it in your report. So easy… and a few weeks later, after the raid was forgotten, you put it in and simply maintained an unnamed friend had given it to you, didn't you? An easy thing to do, no conceivable risk involved. And so for the past six years you have walked the corridors of the Ministry with an illegal magical object in your eye socket, an object that was made with the darkest spells imaginable.

"Such a bad boy you have been," She drawled, amusement clear in her voice while she observed Moody's face redden in anger and growing panic. The others, including Harry, were looking from him to her with a mixture of fascination and disbelief.

"The only thing you didn't plan for," She continued, her voice growing considerably colder. "Was the fact that the owner of that little illegal shop you raided would be able to recognize his most prized object. I met him, you know. And although the Wizengamot wouldn't believe a black market dealer, there _are_ spells that will connect an object to its maker, and he did make the eye."

She paused, and smiled again, her face taking on the pleasant expression of someone asking about the weather. "As far as I know, auror pensions can be lowered even years after retirement if grave offences against the law and procedures get known. We wouldn't want that, Moody, or do we? The most famous auror of the last fifty years, revealed to the world as the petty thief he really is?"

Although Harry had believed it impossible, Moody's face reddened even more and his voice was a barely suppressed howl. "How do you know about that," He growled, betraying himself without even noticing it.

Hermione just smirked, her eyes never leaving his face. "I am a spy, Moody. It is my job to know things."

Whether it was the insolent tone or her grin, this last comment brought Moody to the boiling point. And once the auror had reached a certain level of rage, he acted without thought or consideration.

"Why, you little… minx, I'll show you not to threaten…" With one fluid movement, Moody drew his wand and aimed it at where Hermione sat.

But he hadn't been fast enough. Before his wand had levelled on her seat, Hermione had erupted into a blur of movements. Somehow, she suddenly wasn't seating besides Harry anymore, but was on the table and in one huge leap crouched on the polished wood at Moody's end like a large cat, pressing him into his seat, a knife at his throat.

"I'll take that, thank you," She said with a friendly smile and quickly pried Moody's wand loose from his frozen fingers. She wasn't even breathing hard.

"Merlin's beard," Harry heard someone whisper. He could have sworn it was Shacklebolt. "I never saw anybody move that fast."

"I am disappointed, Moody. I had expected you to be a better loser. Now, will you be a good little paranoid, or should I keep my knife at your throat a bit longer?" Hermione asked pleasantly. Harry saw Moody's throat working, but no sound left the auror's mouth. He looked like a deer caught in the headlights, and Harry had to hide a smile. Constant vigilance hadn't done him much good in the end, it seemed.

"I think Alastor has learned his lesson, Miss Granger," Dumbledore took it on him to answer the question, his tone as pleasantly as Hermione's. "Release him, please."

"Yes, sir," She answered, and the knife vanished from her hand. She jumped from the table, her contact with the floor producing barely a sound, and walked back the long way. Eyes and heads turned as she passed the Order members. But no one uttered a word until she had resumed her seat. Harry noticed that no hair had escaped her braid. She looked as if she had been sitting besides him the whole meeting, not as if she had engaged, and defeated, the most infamous ex-auror alive.

"Any further questions concerning my abilities, or my loyalties?" She asked calmly. She sounded truly interested.

It was in this moment, when he watched her settle into the role of calm professionalism in less than a heartbeat, that Harry realized that she had controlled the situation from the moment Moody had attacked her, that she had chosen the old auror because he was the easiest to goat into drawing his wand. That the whole confrontation had been a demonstration, given to convince the Order of her competence.

And that she had obviously succeeded.

For the sudden action had achieved what no explanation could have done. The Order had finally realized that she wasn't a girl who had overheard a little secret in the staff room. She was the Master Spy. And now that they had seen what that meant, now that they had understood what she was capable of, they were again frozen in their seats.

"Well then," She said, smiling at them all once more. "If everything is clear now, we should perhaps vote on my plan. Be sure that I researched it as carefully as the origin of Moody's magical eye. Headmaster?"

And thus it was that the members of the Inner Circle agreed on the plan of their Master Spy mutely, ended the meeting and left the room without once taking their eyes off the young girl that sat quietly in her chair, her face and clothes immaculate, smiling at them all and politely nodding good bye to them.

And while Harry observed them watching her like mice would a snake, he couldn't help but feel mournful. Tonight, Hermione Granger, nervous know-it-all and meticulous note-taker had died. She would never return to these rooms, her place now occupied by the mysterious woman known as the Master Spy.

And he finally understood why Hermione had clung to her secret so desperately. He had always felt bad about the way people looked at him, how they had only seen the scar in his face, nothing else.

But at least they had looked in his face. The only thing left of Hermione was her arm with the black skull and the snake burnt into it and the small, white hand that could deal out knives with such suspicious ease.

It wasn't much that would be left of her after this evening.

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A/N: Review?

And tell me: Do you want them to hate her for a while now, or should they all come to terms with her quickly? I have, of course, an idea how all this will develop, but I'd love to hear your opinion on it!


	46. Tempus Fugit

**46 Tempus Fugit**

Now that the Order had a plan, a place and a time to look forward to, things changed.

They met again on Sunday afternoon, two days later, to discuss the best course of preparations, all the time eyeing Hermione warily. She kept very silent, having discussed all her proposals beforehand with Severus and Harry. When she talked, it was in the low, calm voice of a mature professional, She looked people squarely in the eye, refusing to let them avoid her, but it was obvious for everyone who knew her that she had withdrawn deeply inside herself.

It was Moody who stressed the importance of additional duel training, especially for those who were out in the rough. He even offered to take over the training himself, perhaps with the help of Remus, who agreed happily.

The additional meetings were easily accepted, too. Everyone who had time, or wished to report something, had now a chance to do so every evening at eight o'clock. Mrs Weasley proposed one compulsory longer meeting on Saturday afternoon that would bring the information together and allow those who hadn't attended every day a chance to keep up with the others. It was also agreed that selected members of the Outer Circle would participate in that meeting, and that the Order would introduce further members to the Inner Circle.

Everyone was surprised when Severus named Fred and George Weasley as his first choice, and while Bill and Arthur seemed quite pleased, their mother/wife clearly wasn't. But Potter had argued most vocally for their inclusion, and whether it was the shock about Snape and Harry Potter agreeing on something, or his actual arguments, the Order finally agreed to the idea.

Other names began to drift in, among them the Professors Flitwick and Vector, and the healer Hannah Jones, who had belonged to the Outer Circle for many years now. Remus Lupin proposed that students already belonging to the Outer Circle like Ginny Weasley, Neville Longbottom and Luna Lovegood should at least attend the duel training they would set up.

They were, after all, endangered enough already by the knowledge they possessed, and as the training sessions would take place anyway, there was no reason not to teach them how to fight properly.

Molly Weasley hadn't liked that idea, either and hadn't stopped complaining until Tonks had told her that her children would grow up, no matter what she did. All they would do was help insure that they really reached adulthood. Mrs Weasley had been rather quiet after that.

All in all, the meeting was a total success for Severus. Over the course of three hours he had managed to coax the Order into all the changes and improvements he had considered most necessary. Details would follow, of course, but this one afternoon had transformed the Order from a passive political gathering to a council of war. And every decision they had passed tonight would better their chances to not only survive, but bring this age long conflict finally to an end.

But although he was more than satisfied with the outcome of the night, Severus couldn't forget how this success had been achieved, and at what cost. Whenever he had a free moment, his eyes would linger on Hermione, proud, strong Hermione, who had given the performance of her life on Friday night and stared them all down, only to collapse in shivers and trembles once they had been back in the safety of his chambers.

Both Potter and Draco had knocked on their tapestry a few minutes later and asked to come in, and Severus had let them happily, believing that the presence of friends, of those who had accepted her, might relieve her, but though she had pulled herself together and talked and even smiled, it obviously hadn't changed the way she felt.

And when he remembered how they had looked at her when they walked out of the room, when he remembered the expression of disgust on Moody's face when the old auror had called her a Death Eater, he understood why she had fought so hard for her anonymity, an anonymity she had now irreversibly lost.

During their long, second Inner Circle meeting his patience had nearly snapped more than once. They had simply not looked at her, had averted their eyes and hearts away from her. When they had referred to information gathered by her, they would look at Severus, not at their Master Spy, and when Severus asked for her comment or confirmation, they would lower their heads and concentrate hard on the table surface.

And she seemed to accept it all. Where he would already have exploded, hissed and sneered at them and staged a dramatic exit, she just looked at them with sad understanding in her eyes. Evoking in Severus the urgent wish to hex them all, every single one of them, into oblivion, because they hurt his Hermione.

But he could do nothing against her wish, and when he asked her afterwards why the hell she was allowing them to treat her in such a way, she had just smiled and told him that they 'needed time'.

After he had watched her pick on her dinner Sunday night and answer his comments with monosyllabic nonsense, he had decided that she was right. They needed time. But that included her. And so he informed her on Monday morning that she should skip her useless afternoon classes and meet him here at one o'clock sharp because she needed time with him.

He would wipe that resigned smile off her face, and he would make her laugh again, no matter how much she wished to suffer in silence.

0o0

The afternoon sun shone through the great windows of the gym and turned Hermione's hair and body golden as they fought.

It was a pleasure to watch her. As little time they were able to spend together these days, as seldom was the chance to see Hermione so free of worry or the nervous energy that carried her through the day. But when she fought, like other women might do when they danced or enjoyed a night out, she seemed to forget everything around her.

It had taken him longer than normally to coax her into this state. Even after they had finished the warm-up and began with easy kicks and blocks had there been a frown of worry on her forehead. It had taken a barely missing kick to her nose to stop any thoughts about the world outside this gym, but once she had concentrated on her body alone, tension and weariness had bled out of her with every motion.

Her face open and expressive, her teeth exposed in a silent laugh of pleasure and thrill, she danced with him, knives glittering and bodies moving in impossible flashes of speed.

Severus found it hard to defeat her these days, partly because her progress in the art of fighting was so fast that she could now easily surpass everyone of the Order and even rival some of the best fighters he had trained with.

But it wasn't her ability that endangered him more than once this afternoon and forced him to concentrate deeply on the intricate steps of magic and blade Hermione performed. It was her sheer, pure beauty, her joy that seemed to radiate around her and took his breath and mind away every time he looked at her.

How had Minerva called him? Infatuated? He would never admit it in the open, but here, in this room of truth and ability, he accepted the term as most fitting.

She won against him this golden afternoon, for the first time ever, and when her knife was at his throat, her body pressed against his back, she stood on tiptoe and leaned forward. He could feel her breath tickling the tender skin of his ear. Then she softly placed her lips on his neck and licked his sweat away.

He moaned. "It is forbidden to torture prisoners, Hermione," He whispered, and her laugh against his skin made him moan again.

"Is that so?" She whispered back and goosebumps raced down his spine. "Then I am afraid I will have to free you, Severus."

Her tongue flickered once more across his neck as she withdrew her blade. When she stepped away from him, it was as if the world had suddenly lost some part of its colour. He closed his eyes, breathing deeply to regain at least part of his control, then turned around to her.

She had walked over to the ceiling high windows and sat down on one of the chairs Draco and Potter had placed there. Her gaze fixed on the burning line of the horizon, she absently opened her slide, combing her hair with her fingers.

Severus found that he couldn't take his eyes from her. Her skin was glistening wet in the afternoon light and her hair wove an aureole around her head. The image made his heart ache.

"'The barque she sat in. like a burnished throne/ Burnt on the water: the poop was beaten gold;/ Purple the sails, and so perfumed that / The winds were love-sick with them. / Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale / Her infinite variety: other women cloy / The appetites they feed; but she makes hungry/Where most she satisfies'", he quoted, watching her with dark, burning eyes.

She let go of her hair, turned around and smiled at him playfully.

"'The chair she sat in, like a burnished throne/ Glowed on the marble, where the glass / Held up by standards wrought with fruited vines / From which a golden Cupidon peeped out'", she quoted back at him, "'Under the firelight, under the brush, her hair / Spread out in fiery points / Glowed into words, then would be savagely still. / I think we are in rats' alley / Where the dead men lost their bones'. I never thought you would prefer Shakespeare over T.S. Eliot, Severus!"

He mock scowled, walked over to her and swooped her up in an embrace: "That´s what you turned me into, you wretched woman", he complained, "a hopeless romantic without a sense for modern poetry. Next I will start carving your name into the trees around Hogwarts."

"I would forbid that", she teased back, "I like those trees better than I do my name!"

She leaned against him, her cheek resting on his chest, and closed her eyes. Minutes passed as he stood and held her, his eyes on her lowered head and the once relaxed line of her shoulders. Then she sniffed, her nose twitching adorably, and wrinkled her mouth.

"A shower, I think," She announced dryly. "Urgently."

They both followed her advice willingly, but when she joined him back in the library, ready to settle on their favourite sofa, he took her hand and led her over to the kitchen.

"What is going on?" She asked. "Does Jane want to see us?"

He shook his head with a smile. "Jane isn't here today," He answered. "But she would only disturb me anyway."

"Then what are you up to?" She questioned, a mixture of curiosity and insecurity in her eyes.

"Tonight, I have decided to let you enjoy one of the many advantages that comes with being loved by a Potions Master," He told her in a grave and important voice.

"What," She asked back amusedly. "Have you hidden a love potion in there, or a bottle of Felix felicis?"

"Even better," He answered, and, puffing out his chest and assuming the pompous posture of Fudge. "Tonight, Hermione, I am going to cook for you."

Her pearly laughter filled the kitchen with sun, but when he moved over to the pans and pots and chose a heavy pot, she looked distinctly surprised. He grinned, walked over to her and escorted her to a chair by the window.

"Tea or juice while you wait?" He asked.

"Severus, are you serious?" She asked back, her eyes widening slightly when he opened a storage cupboard and started rummaging through it. "I mean, I never knew you could cook!"

"There are a lot of things you don't know about me yet, Miss Granger," He retorted playfully. "And Potions Masters are the best cooks of the wizarding world. Out of principle. Tea or juice?"

"Juice, I think," She answered, slightly confused. "I… But have we got time for this? The Order meeting will be in less than two hours!"

"I am also a very efficient cook," He announced pompously. "And, besides, those wretched idiots can wait a few minutes for us. They wasted enough of our time with their stupidity already."

"That's not true, Severus," She disagreed, her voice suddenly sad. "I can understand it. They just need time. I have shocked them badly."

"They don't need time, they need a good whipping," He answered in a tone that left no room for discussion, then walked over to the hearth and poured a golden liquid from a small pot into a mug. "Here," He said, handing it over to her. "Hot apple juice with cinnamon. Simple but brilliant."

He touched her cheek for a moment, a tender caress that softened her features and made the line of her shoulders relax. Severus still couldn't believe how willingly she reacted to his touch, how much it seemed to mean to her. But this was no time for intimacy or serious talks. This was a time for bickering, and sarcasm, and dry, condescending humour that would create a backbone strong enough to last through tonight's Order meeting.

"Besides, last weekend wasn't the only time when they behaved as if they had raisins instead of brains. Have I ever told you how the Order reacted during the first war, when they found out that Remus was a werewolf?"

He launched into a long story about the Order's behaviour around Remus while he started to prepare their early dinner. He had decided on a saffron risotto with seafood, both because it took little time to prepare and because he knew how much Hermione loved shrimps and crabs – a rather un-British taste that was seldom satisfied by the meals served in the Great Hall.

When he described in great detail how Minerva, rather young back then and a far cry from her pristine older self, had squeaked in a most undignified way every time Remus walked by her, and how a barely graduated Hufflepuff who had never been any good in Defence Against the Dark Arts anyway had started to carry garlic in his pockets whenever he went to a meeting, Hermione smiled.

By the time he told her how Remus had taken to wearing bells so that he wouldn't cause any more nervous breakdowns, he was rewarded with the first laughter from Hermione. He moved on to other stories about the Order's little idiocies and hypocrisies over the years, and by the time his preparations were finished, the last trace of sorrow and bitterness had vanished from her face.

Dinner was excellent, as Severus informed her without the least bit of self-consciousness, and Hermione agreed amusedly.

While they ate, Severus launched her into a heated discussion about Asiatic versus Italian rice, both outdoing each other with nonsensical arguments. Severus had never known anybody who loved mock arguments as much as Hermione.

And when he finally challenged her to a game of anagram-guessing, the carefree joy on her face nearly resembled her feelings during their afternoon duel.

Without knowing it, Severus was playing a role Hermione knew by heart from her many years with Harry and Ron. Whenever she had become too obsessive about something, they would bicker, behave like fools or make puppy dog eyes at her until all worry was rushed away in a flood of laughter and friendship.

Granted, Severus' way of making her forget her worries was much different – where Harry and Ron had been foolish, he was witty, where they had been silly, he was sarcastic, and where they had indulged in wild speculation (not seldom about Severus himself, but she wouldn't tell him that), he was supplying memories from over twenty years of experience with the people he talked about.

But the feeling of being cared for, of being someone's centre of attention and the reason someone was willing to make fun of himself, was the same. It was even stronger with Severus, who normally didn't tend to silliness at all

And while she listened to him, and laughed, and echoed his self satisfied comments with praises of her own, she realized how much time had gone by since someone other than Severus had behaved like that around her. The realization hurt, but only for a moment. Then she relaxed again, concentrated on the excellent meal Severus had prepared for her, and felt happiness bubble up in her throat like the finest champagne.

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On this early Monday evening, Harry was the first to arrive at the Headquarters, settling down on one of the sofas a textbook on advanced Charms in his lap. He had begun to study whenever and wherever he found the chance to do it, and even the jokes and comments of his fellow Gryffindors when they found him at the breakfast table, his nose in a book, didn't disturb him any more.

He and Draco had planned to meet in the living room area of the Headquarters tonight as they were used to do when both had time before the meetings. What Draco had termed their "lessons" and Harry his "torture-sessions" were still taking place in Snape's private gym of course, as neither Draco nor Harry had the wish to let the Order even glimpse what they were doing there.

Seeing the Boy Who Lived stumble over obstacles while trying to balance a book on his head, or hearing him recite the twenty oldest and greatest wizarding families while Draco groaned and complained about his Gryffindor stupidity would undermine his authority, Harry was quite certain about that.

But the other things they did, talk about the school and their fellow students, analyze the defence-mechanisms of Hogwarts or stage their next public quarrel, were exactly the sort of things the Order should see. Or at least Draco and Hermione had said that. They would show them that he cared, that he worked hard and was able to act strategically, they had told him.

Harry had thought them rather overdoing it. The other Inner Circle members that arrived earlier hardly ever seemed to notice them. But when he had once looked up from the discussion of an article from the Daily Prophet, he had found Moody's sharp, quick eyes resting on him, and once he had turned around from the contemplation of a book shelf and found himself eye to eye with Tonks and Shacklebolt, both watching him with a strangely judging expression.

Harry's first reaction had been irritation, but then nervousness had settled in to stay. He himself was surprised by how nervous he felt, after all, being stared at had always been a large part of his life in the wizarding world. It had taken one of the private sessions with Draco for him to understand why he felt clammy and self conscious every time one of the Order looked at him this way.

"Of course they are watching you," Draco had told him when Harry had described those peculiar looks. "You are the only one who can defeat Voldemort. In every battle we might fight, you will be the centre piece, perhaps even the leader. They are wondering whether you will be up to it, or whether you are just a scarhead who was lucky once."

Harry of course answered the scarhead with a "ferret", but it was a rather half-hearted, automatic response. A leader? How the hell was he to lead? And who would ever agree to be led into battle by him? Even the thought was pathetic.

Draco must have seen the rising panic in his face, for he had rolled his eyes as he always did when Harry behaved "especially Gryffindorish".

"Don't act as if it were such a big thing," He said. "After all, you've been leading your very own merry little band of imbeciles ever since you entered school."

"They aren't imbeciles," Harry protested.

"No," Draco agreed with a pretence of thoughtfulness. "One is Hermione, your weasel counts rather as a natural catastrophe, and the Lovegood girl is not imbecile but raving mad. But still you led them to battle in the Department of Mysteries, and you won against the Death Eaters of the Inner Circle."

"You are talking about a time when I landed all my friends in hospital and got my Godfather killed, just because of one bad decision I made, Draco," Harry answered tiredly, not really wanting to think about his fifth year, but it seemed Draco hadn't made his point yet.

"Exactly," The Slytherin answered seriously.

"What?"

"That's what leading is about, Potter. Making decisions, giving orders that other people will follow. Sometimes they're right, sometimes they're wrong. But someone must do the job, and that someone has to possess both the knowledge and ability to decide and the strength to carry the responsibility for his decisions."

"You don't know what you're talking about, Draco," Harry answered. He felt so weary. Even thinking about how he had stumbled his friends into a battle they could only lose back then gave him the creeps. And to imagine that he would be forced to do it again, to lead the people he loved, the people that had taught him everything he knew to battle – it made him want to curl into a ball and whimper a little.

"I don't know what I'm talking about?" Draco asked, and something in his voice caused Harry to look up to him. He found his friend's face suddenly changed, harder and colder than he had seen it for a long time. "You are talking to the Malfoy heir, Potter, the man whose father is Voldemort's right hand. I have been trained to take over that job since before I could walk. I had to act according to my status when you hadn't even learned to read. And I knew the consequences of failure long before you had left that dismal cupboard of yours!"

Somewhere along the way, his words had turned into ice and his grey eyes were dark as if a winter storm drove towering waves across them. Harry couldn't help but stare. He hadn't seen Draco like this for months – defiant, cold, and every inch the prince of Slytherin.

But unlike the times Draco had worn this face in his presence before, Harry now knew it for what it was – an impenetrable mask, erected against hurt, and fear, and pain.

He had lowered his head in shame.

"I am sorry, Draco," He had said. "I didn't think. I should have known better."

He had heard a sigh, and felt Draco walk through the room towards him.

"Gryffindors," He had heard his friend say resignedly. "Haven't I told you never to apologize? How long does it take to learn a concept as simple as that?"

But although the words had betrayed nothing but frustration, the hand that had rested on his shoulder for a moment had told him that he was forgiven.

Harry smiled at the memory, his head still lowered over his book.

"Don't grin like that, Potter, it doesn't become you," Draco's voice drawled from the row of tapestries.

"Staring at me again, Draco?" Harry countered lightly. "I can't help wondering if you haven't got any other hobbies."

"You mean apart from torturing Gryffindors and irritating Order members? What else is there worth living for?" Draco asked, walking over to him and collapsing onto the couch with a muffled sigh.

It had delighted Harry to see that Draco had started to abandon his stiff posture and perfect manners around him. The first entrance of an Order member would, of course, find him sitting upright again, his back perfectly straight, but as long as they were alone Draco almost behaved like a normal person his age. Almost.

"Now, don't play the bad boy, Draco," Harry answered sweetly, not able to help the grin that spread on his face. "I happened to walk across the room while you talked to Mrs Weasley yesterday, and I couldn't help but overhear what she said to you…"

Draco groaned and clutched a pillow against his chest, as if searching for protection.

"She told me that I was much too thin," He confided to Harry in a whisper, his eyes widened comically like those of a small child, frightened of a storm. "She said she would make me eat more!"

Harry chuckled. "If you don't take good care, you will soon be adopted into the Weasley family," He commented happily, causing Draco to groan and bang the pillow against his forehead.

"The disgrace!" He whined.

"Careful, Draco," Harry protested, his smile now downright sardonic. "Or people might start to think you're really a nice person, somewhere deep inside, perhaps someone worthy of Gryffindor."

This caused Draco to turn around and bang his head against the edge of the sofa. The effect was however slightly ruined when the Slytherin straightened and promptly used both hands to smooth back his hair and remove an imagined wrinkle in his robes. Harry snickered. Draco was just unbelievably vain.

"It was inevitable," Draco finally said in a defeated voice. "I am barely able to keep my dignity with you around. And now that I am not the freshest scandal in the Order, people will just forget my dangerous and evil origins and treat me as one of your imbecile friends." He shrugged.

"Yes, now that they have someone else who is dangerous and evil for them," Harry agreed quietly, all humour vanished from his voice.

Draco nodded, his face serious, and opened his mouth as if to agree. Suddenly, Harry could see something in him change, his shoulders straightening, his eyes narrowing nearly unnoticeably.

"What do you make of the news about Gringotts?" He asked, and without turning around, Harry knew that another member of the Order had entered the room.

0o0o

They kept the conversation on light political topics, seemingly concentrated on each other while from the corner of their eyes they searched for Hermione and Snape. But although the room filled with a surprising amount of people given the fact that it was Monday evening and most had spent the majority of their weekends here, Spymaster and Master Spy were not among them.

It was past eight already, and the atmosphere in the room had changed to one of barely repressed nervousness, when the tapestry connected to Snape's chambers glowed golden and they stepped through, Snape first, Hermione following him closely.

The effect was immediate.

It was not that the conversation in the room stopped or even changed tone, it was just that, while the men and women of the Inner Circle talked on, it was clear to everybody that they weren't listening to each other. Even while they talked, all their attention was fixed on Hermione.

Her face had been relaxed when both had entered, a tiny smile grazing on her lips. Now, while Harry and Draco watched her, they could see her shoulders straightening, her posture stiffening, and her eyes losing all expression.

Whatever Snape had done to make her relax, Harry thought, it wasn't enough to withstand the collective disapproval of the Order. Already he could see her retreat into the safety of her inner hiding place, could see masks slide back in place.

Then, Snape turned his head to her side, and, bending slightly towards her, whispered something in her ears. Harry strained his ears, and imagined to hear something about werewolves, and bells, but was sure that he had misheard when Hermione's face broke into a grin.

"Touché," He heard her answer, and it was in the rich, relaxed voice of his friend again, not the brittle tone of the old woman that had been in her place for the last day.

As if Draco had listened in on his thoughts, he too bent over to Harry.

"It is unbelievable how well he knows her," He whispered. "That effect would have taken me hours."

Harry nodded. "Me too," He admitted. "But then I never was very good at saying the right things at the right time."

Draco chuckled. "The first true thing said tonight. Though I must admit that…"

His eyes darkened. His sentence, unfinished, gave way to silence. But Harry, concentrating on the same thing that had taken Draco's attention away, didn't even notice.

Madeye Moody was walking towards Hermione. And considering the way their last contact had ended, that couldn't be a good thing.

"Miss Granger," The ex-auror began, and Harry could see Hermione visibly bracing herself. He knew that she had expected revenge from Moody – she had told him as much. But now wasn't the right moment, not when she was relaxed for the first time in days. Harry secretly prayed that this confrontation wouldn't lead to another ugly scene between her and the Order.

But whatever Hermione was thinking, or fearing, when she turned around to the old auror, her face showed nothing but calm expectation.

"Mr Moody," She answered the greeting, inclining her head slightly to show her respect.

In an abrupt, strangely awkward movement, Moody stretched out his right arm, and Harry could Hermione tense in the expectation of an attack.

But that attack never came. Instead, Moody offered her his hand, and after a moment of hesitation, Hermione took it.

"My respect," Moody growled in his usual tone of voice, and if it sounded a bit rougher than normally, the change was barely audible. Pumping Hermione's hand up and down a few times, he let go of it again and leaned forward slightly, examining her face closely.

"Although there's nothing I hate as much as spying, secretive sneakery, I know a fighter when I see one. And you, young woman, are a warrior. Your abilities demand respect. And I apologize for my behaviour. It is good to have you guard our backs."

That said, he turned around and walked to his place, not giving anyone the chance to react to his words.

As he watched his friend, for the first time in his life, Harry found himself wishing fervently for the presence of Colin Creevey. For the expression in Hermione's face practically screamed for a camera.

She looked so nonplussed, so totally taken aback that Harry couldn't help but snicker in amusement. Her eyes flickered over to him, still impossibly wide, and he mouthed a "Constant Vigilance". The annoyed narrowing of her eyes made him snicker even harder.

But Draco's elbow silenced him quite effectively, reminding him at the same time that they weren't alone. Slowly, Harry let his eyes travel away from Hermione. Snape, he couldn't help noticing, appeared incredibly smug, just like he did when a Slytherin had brewed a difficult potion correctly in class.

The rest of the Order however looked even more nonplussed than Hermione, and more than a few seemed rather ashamed.

_Which is only right_, Harry thought grimly. _Moody was attacked by her, and yet he's the only one with enough courage to accept her. They ought to be ashamed_.

He sent an angry glance towards Shacklebolt, who averted his eyes. _And to think that I was so impressed by all of them when I first met them. Being a grown-up really loses its glamour when you become one yourself_.

But although it was obvious to Harry that a few of them were beginning to second guess their behaviour towards Hermione after what Moody had done, none of them came forward to repeat his gesture. Only Bill and Tonks sent excusing smiles in Hermione's direction and were answered with a slight nod and a smile.

Mrs Weasley however looked even more irritated than before, probably not understanding how a man like Moody could apologize that way to a girl. _There'll be more problems coming from that direction, _Harry thought. _She probably won't accept any of us fully until we're past thirty_.

He was still thinking and worrying about Mrs Weasley when Professor Dumbledore opened the meeting, happily greeting everyone who had found the time to attend. It would be a rather short one, naturally. They had met only yesterday, and as most of the members still had a day job that needed time and attention, not much could have been accomplished. But still there were things to report.

Dumbledore had talked to their possible candidates for the Inner Circle, and all had agreed readily. Remus had taken over the job to talk with Ginny, Luna and Neville, and while the latter had turned deadly pale after the offer of extra Defence training, they all were quite eager to participate.

It was Snape, however, who had used his morning to best advantage, and for the first time Harry wondered if Hermione really had been his only reason to quit teaching. Being the only one that could fully concentrate on Order work day and night, he had used what little had been left of their weekend and Monday morning not only to put their maps and tactical diagrams up to date, but also to develop a formula so complicated that it took Harry and most of the others several minutes to even remotely comprehend it.

As far as Harry could say, Snape had gathered every shred of information they had on Death Eater attacks, including the number of Death Eaters involved, weaponry, locations and the number of muggles, muggleborns or other wizards hurt, maimed, driven to insanity or killed.

Even the thought of sifting though information like that made Harry feel slightly queasy

He had then compressed all that into a long string of numbers and runes according to the rules of some arithmantic principle developed by a 19th century wizard - or at least Harry thought so, for from that point on his understanding had become slightly fuzzy – added the rune used to develop patterns and see more clearly, as well as an arithmantic logarithm. The resulting formula would tell them more about Voldemort's attack patterns.

Or something like that.

Harry could see that Draco, who was sitting opposite to him, had tuned Snape out completely. To the rest of the Order he was probably looking attentive and highly interested, but he had that far away gleam in his eyes that told Harry he wasn't listening at all.

Not many had fared better than they. Tonks eyes had glazed over and Mr Weasley looked slightly dazed. Professor McGonagall seemed more than a bit annoyed by the smug smile Snape wore in his face, indicating that he knew nobody had been able to follow him. Dumbledore looked as happy and serene as always, but Harry had seen how many Lemon Drops the Headmaster had eaten over the last ten minutes, and with that amount of sugar it was probably impossible not to look that way.

Hermione, sitting to Harry's left, was concentrating on a parchment, filled with numbers and runes, on which she hastily scribbled notes. Harry had the resigned suspicion that she had understood every word.

"Now then," Snape summarized in a slightly bored tone, and Harry could see several people around the table straightening up. Hopefully, their Spymaster was finished with the details now and would present them with the working solution. "If I interpret the existing data correctly, we can assume that his Grimshaw's formula must be multiplied with Norral's logarithm number three under the influence of the crow. That should give us the attack pattern…"

"I'm afraid that's not quite right, Severus," Hermione interrupted calmly, not even raising her head from the parchment she was studying.

Nervousness awoke among the Order, and Harry could see many of them shifting restlessly on their chairs. This wasn't the way such things usually happened. Normally, Snape would finish his report, the others would congratulate him on his work without having understood very much, and everything would be perfect.

Nobody was supposed to criticize Snape. He didn't take well to that. But Hermione seemed to ignore that age long behavioural pattern.

"You made a mistake when you connected the runes to your condensed incidence formula, do you see? You have to begin with Longarius' rune and only then you can add the numbers."

_What? What the hell is she talking about?_ Harry asked himself. One look towards Draco was answered with a tiny shake of the head. The Slytherin had obviously no idea what Hermione wanted to say, either, and he _had_ been taking ancient runes for the past three years.

Snape stopped short, consulted his own parchment and studied it for a second.

At the other end of the table, Harry could see Tonks swallow nervously. She had studied under Snape and knew how he behaved when someone corrected him as well as Harry. He would probably start sneering and scowling every second now…

But they were yet again surprised.

"You're right," Snape answered simply, scratched out a figure of his formula and then added: "What would you take to be the most likely incedence coordinates, then? I'm not sure whether we shouldn't use Longarius or Heymann first."

"Heymann, I think," Hermione answered a moment, not noticing that the whole room was staring at her by now. Neither she nor Snape had glanced up once since their discussion had started. "But I'm not entirely sure about the effect Norral's logarithm will have on them. You should probably add a containment rune, just to be on the sure side, or would that interfere with the final outcome?"

Snape shrugged, "Your guess is probably better than mine. What do you think, Albus?"

He finally looked up and his eyes met a row of speechless faces. Even the Headmaster was amazed.

"What?" Snape asked, irritation rising quickly in him. "Did I say something funny, or why are you looking that way?"

"She told you that you have made a mistake, Severus," The Headmaster pointed out weakly.

"Yes," Snape answered impatiently. "And she was perfectly right. Her grasp of ancient runes is, after all, superior to mine. So what is it that makes you look like a frog, Albus?"

"It's only that when I told you in seventh year that I couldn't read your instructions, you threatened me to shrink my tongue and use it instead of the shrivelfigs. I only said I couldn't _read_ your handwriting," Tonks threw in, not knowing whether to be amused or shocked. "And I never saw you admitting to a mistake before, at least not without a lot of shouting."

"You really told her you'd shrink her tongue? I have to remember that one for the next time you behave like a prat," Hermione commented him, amusement glittering in her eyes. She completely ignored the choking sound Remus to her left made. "You really are a frightful teacher, you know that?"

"I'll have you know that awe inspiring is a much better description," Severus answered, seemingly indignant. "A lot of hard work went into that persona."

"And I always thought it came quite naturally to you," Hermione commented innocently, and the room froze again. Severus Snape didn't like it when somebody made fun of him. Not at all. Everyone of them knew that. Only Professor McGonagall did it, sometimes, and she had known him since he was a child.

But he only scowled at Hermione half heartedly, and a bit more convincing at the rest of the Order.

"Very funny," He said. "Now that we have all had a good laugh and trampled my ego to death, could we please continue? What was the rune you proposed?"

"Containment rune 3.4," Hermione answered as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened.

And to her nothing had, Harry realized as he remembered the behaviour he had witnessed between Snape and her during the past weeks. It was just that they had stopped pretending in the presence of the Inner Circle, at least to a certain degree.

Harry looked around and saw the amazement in those faces around the table. If that was enough to freak them out, he thought warily, how would they react to the fact that their Master Spy and Spymaster were sharing chambers – and, as far as Harry knew, a bed?

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"Harry," Ron began, biting his lip with nervousness. "I have been thinking a lot these past weeks, and I…"

He sighed, cleared his throat and started again. "I have spent the last weeks thinking about my behaviour and I have finally realized… that is…when I look at what I did with objective eyes, I must say that it was wrong… It's only that I felt so alone when you two were off at Order meetings, and then even Ginny and Neville were angry with me…No, forget that I said that."

He took a deep breath. "I was just so… shocked, I guess. I had always imagined a future for all of us, after we defeated You-Know-Who. And in that future, you were alive and happy and Hermione and I were… I mean, I always thought I knew her better than anybody in the world, better even than you with your tempers and your secrecy – sorry, you know how I mean that. And then it turns out that while I am busy planning a future for 'us'," He laughed bitterly at the word. "That all the time she has walked into a direction leading away from me.

"I guess I just felt like a complete fool, and I wanted that feeling to go away."

He stopped his speech abruptly, and, eyeing his red face in the mirror with disgust, grumbled: "Oh, stop whining you dolt! You can't expect them to pity you. Just stick to the facts."

He took another deep breath and straightened. "All I want to say is that I don't expect you or her to forgive me. I only want a chance to do my part in this fight. I don't know if there is any need for me in the Order, or if your plans still include me, but if they do, I am willing to do anything to defeat You-know-… Voldemort."

He shuddered.

"And I also want you to know that I apologize. Not to Snape or that ferret…Draco Malfoy," He corrected himself, turning even redder. "But to Hermione… and to you, because in a way I betrayed your friendship, too. I will try to be a better friend in the future, someone that deserves your confidence again."

He stopped, nodded as if satisfied with what he had achieved, and, with another deep breath, turned to another mirror a few feet to his left. Flattening his hair with one hand and adjusting his school robes with the other, he finally dried his sweaty palms on the black cloth of his robes.

„Hermione. I just want you to know that I apologize..." He began to practice his second speech.

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The text Severus quotes when he watches Hermione braiding her hair is from Shakespeare's „Anthony and Cleopatra", Act Two. The quote Hermione answers with is out of T.S. Eliot's „The Waste Land" (where Severus took the password to his chambers from), II: A Game of Chess. Eliot here alludes to Shakespeare.

The allusion with the carving of Hermione's name into the trees is from Shakespeare's „As You Like It", where a love-sick man does exactly that and is criticized because it damages the trees.

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Let me again remind you of my forum! I was away for a few weeks, and update delays like that will always be found in the forum so that you don't have to wonder what happened to me! Check in and leave me a note, or discuss the story with fellow readers!

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And Review!


	47. Fair is Foul

**Fair is Foul**

"Out of the question," Hermione's voice left no room for discussion, but Harry tried it anyway.

"I understand how you must feel, Hermione. I mean, I was ready to hex Ron into next week when he approached me last night, but he did seem contrite, and we could really use him out there!"

"No."

Harry groaned. It was just too early for this. Now that he thought about it, it had been too late yesterday evening when Ron had confronted him with his little speech, telling him how sorry he was and that he wanted to become a part of whatever was going on.

"Hermione…" He tried again to articulate his thoughts past the cloud of tiredness that seemed to float around his head.

From out of nowhere, a mug was pressed into his hand. He looked to his left and saw Jane, Snape's rather awe and fear inspiring house elf.

"Better wake up properly before you try to argue with her," She advised dryly. "She's as stubborn as Severus these days."

Despite the situation, Harry couldn't completely hide a grin when Snape scowled and rose from the desk where he had been scribbling something, probably another horribly complicated formula.

Harry sighed in irritation. Really, how could people be able to think this early in the morning? It was downright unfair!

"Quiet, woman," The Spymaster ordered. "I will not be insulted before breakfast."

"You never take breakfast, you old bat," Jane answered, walking over to him and handing him another cup of tea in a way that appeared incredibly smug. "But now that you mention it, you really should."

"Back to the topic at hand," Snape said, and Harry saw with amusement that his former Potions Master seemed rather uneasy with Jane's critical eyes resting on him. "So Mr Weasley thinks he can just waltz back into good grace with a teary eye and an apology."

Hadn't Harry known Draco for some time, he would have been irritated by Snape's obvious amusement. As it was, he could interpret the twitching of his mouth's corner all too well as a deeply Slytherin feeling: the amusement about Gryffindor stupidity and lack of subtlety that seemed to know no end.

"Whatever he thinks," Hermione replied coldly. "It won't work. He has lost all respect and trust I ever held for him."

"I'm not talking about forgetting what he did," Harry tried again, now that the strong black tea had awakened his ability to reason. "Or about forgiving him. What he wants is to join the Order, and to start training with us. And there would be definite advantages if we let him."

"Advantages," Hermione said, a raised eyebrow enough to voice her disbelief. "Over the last two years, all Ron has ever caused was trouble."

"That's not true, Hermione," Harry protested. "Much of that trouble was caused by me. And although in hindsight it was not the best thing to go along with whatever stupidity I came up with, all he tried to do was being a good friend. You can't fault him for that."

Hermione sighed and rubbed her temples with the tips of her fingers.

"I know," She conceded. "That was unfair. But my point still stands. To work with him, to let him into the Inner Circle, would necessarily mean to trust him. And even if you two are willing to do that, I can't."

"I do not think the day will ever come on which I will _trust_ Mr Weasley," Snape answered, obviously insulted even by the thought. "The question we should ask is rather that of his uses. Is he best left to his own devices and cut off from all information, or should we employ him in ways that could make our work easier?"

"In what ways could Ron be useful to us?" Hermione asked, for the first time letting her anger and frustration show.

"Now, Hermione, that's not fair…" Harry began, but Snape interrupted him easily.

"If we follow your plan, Hermione," He said, his voice surprisingly soft. "You and Potter will have to withstand the Death Eater's first attack alone. You will be occupied with engaging the Dark Lord, which leaves Potter on his own with at least the Inner Circle. Every single person standing with him at that moment, as incompetent and immature as they may be, will increase Potter's chances of survival. And the only person that could stand there with you legitimately is Ronald Weasley. Do you really want to dismiss this added security?"

Harry opened his mouth to argue that he didn't need added security, then closed it again as Snape's logic caught up with him. Only Draco's training allowed him to keep his face expressionless. Really, how brilliant was that man? And how well did he know Hermione?

As he watched thoughts flicker across her face, Harry realized that she would never have accepted Ron for any reason connected with herself. She would easily forego a chance for extra security if it helped to keep Ron away. But she would never let risk come to one of her friends because she didn't want to work with someone. Snape had forced her to accept the inevitable in the most bearable, logical way.

And he had only used the truth to do it.

Finally, after her face had first darkened in anger and then softened with resignation, Hermione nodded, showing that she accepted the validity of Snape's argument.

"It's not as if I could decide this, anyway," She said quietly, nursing her mug in her hands. "I suppose Ron will talk to the Headmaster, and he and the Inner Circle will be all too glad to take him in again."

Wishing that it were so easy, Harry shook his head. "Ron won't do that," He answered. "He told me that he wouldn't go against our wishes. He promised me that he would stick to our decision."

He cringed slightly, not sure how to phrase this, but finding no way to do it acceptably. "I'm afraid he plans to apologize to you during breakfast."

Hermione's hands tightened around the corners of her chair. To his surprise, it was Jane who nodded in understanding.

"Which explains why you invited yourself in at half past seven this morning. It would have been a bad idea to let Miss Stubborn walk into that unprepared."

Harry blushed, not wanting to admit that he had spent the night remembering Ron's near death experience at the hands of Hermione. He didn't want Ron hurt, of course. But he was Slytherin enough by now to prefer a hurt Ron in private to an open conflict in the Great Hall during the hubbub of breakfast.

As if Jane had read his thoughts, she suddenly grinned, walked over to him and stood on tiptoe to pat his cheek. "Good thought, boy," She told him patronisingly. "You're progressing nicely."

That said, she walked over to the kitchen door and announced that she would have to cut the chatting short as she had work to do. The door clapped shut behind her and even Hermione couldn't suppress a chuckle at the look of utter confusion on Harry's face.

But her expression sobered quickly when Harry turned back towards her. "It's your decision, Hermione. You and Professor Snape were wronged by him much more than I was. But you should know that I would like to give Ron this chance. I also think he could be… useful."

Harry couldn't help but look over to his former Professor with the last word, who nodded in silent agreement.

But Hermione hadn't seen the interaction between Snape and Harry. She was staring into her mug with an expression so miserable that Harry couldn't understand it, not even when he took Ron's actions into account.

"Why are you so worried?" He finally asked when she made no move to talk. "I can understand that you are angry or disappointed, but you look as if you actually _fear_ Ron, and I can't understand that."

Still, silence. Until Snape shifted in his chair, refilled his cup, and spoke.

"It is not Mr Weasley she fears," He said, and although he clearly talked with Harry, his black eyes were resting on Hermione alone, Hermione, whose body had tensed at these words. Snape waited, giving her a chance to stop him or talk on in his stead, but the only thing that moved in her face were the muscles in her jaw.

"She fears herself," He finally continued, his voice warm and soothing. "At the moment, she is one of the most dangerous persons in Hogwarts, perhaps one of the most dangerous in the wizarding world. She can kill in more ways you could imagine. And Mr Weasley has the unique ability to anger her more than anybody else. With Hermione, anger means loss of control."

Harry's face paled as he made the connection. "You're worried you might do something to him," He whispered. "That's why you kept away from him. Not because you never wanted to see him again, but because you were afraid you would loose control if you met him."

Hermione nodded, slowly, hesitatingly. "It was a close call when he found my pensieve," She admitted, her voice as tense as her body. "If you hadn't been there, I might have simply killed him. And I don't know… if I will see him every day in the Order, if we train together… I'm quite sure he can't stop himself from saying something stupid. And I'm not sure how I will react then."

"I'd help you hide the body," Snape offered, friendliness incarnated.

Harry sent him a poisonous glare, then remembered who it was he was glaring at and ducked his head. To his surprise, all he received as an answer was a sardonic smirk and a mockingly cocked eyebrow. If he hadn't known better, he would have thought that Hermione had softened Snape.

0o0

After a few minutes of Harry reassuring Hermione that she wouldn't ever kill Ron, Hermione replying that she hoped so and Snape smirking entirely unconstructively, the meeting was ended by their need for breakfast. It would not do for Hermione and Harry to both be absent from the Great Hall – the gossip about their "relationship" and the quarrel with Ron was already bad enough.

So they crossed into the Head Girl's room and walked down to ground level together.

"Perhaps we could talk about this some more during lunch break?" Harry asked.

Hermione smiled, but she seemed only half aware of what was going on around them. "No, thanks, Harry," She answered. "But I really have to study. The NEWTs are only months away, you know that, don't you?"

For a moment, Harry was utterly confused. The ease with which Hermione slipped into the role of know-it-all and Head Girl had surprised him time and again over the last months. One moment she would be discussing strategy, bickering with Draco or explain the structure of the Death Eater's Inner Circle to Harry, the next she would chatter on about Transfiguration marks, the Potions essay or Harry's schoolwork and that he really had to try harder if he wanted to become an auror.

The creepy thing about it was that, although Harry knew for a fact that she hadn't handed in either DADA or Transfiguration homework for months, offering the teachers only sealed, empty rolls of parchment, she still knew more about the next lesson's subject than Harry. And he _had_ started working hard on his school assignments.

They made their way to the Great Hall and the Gryffindor table while chatting about things that seemed totally unimportant to Harry, although he knew well enough that they had been crucial to him less than half a year ago.

It had been hard for him to pretend like this in the beginning, to talk about topics that didn't matter, while in the back of his mind he had a hundred important things to discuss with Hermione and always too little time to do it.

And when he thought that Hermione had listened to his and Ron's babbling for months without telling them once how childish and immature they were, how she had deceived them out of necessity just as she and Harry now deceived most of the Gryffindors, he had felt uneasy and ashamed.

But now, after a few weeks of practice, he found that it wasn't as bad as he had thought. In fact, there wasn't so much difference between what he did now and what he had done ever since he had come to Hogwarts, like back in second year when had heard the basilisk's voice and still pretended everything was alright, or in third when he had worried about that terrible murderer Black who was out to get him, or in fourth when everyone had believed he was an attention seeker and all he wanted was die of fear.

Not to talk about fifth or sixth year when the public opinion had alternated between calling him mad and a saviour while he had run around blindly not knowing what do to with his anger and sorrow.

Now that he thought about it, this strange hide-and-seek game they were playing was actually better. For the first time in his life, the secrets he kept were not entirely his own. They didn't make him lonely. He shared them with friends, like Hermione and Draco, and with like-minded fighters. What he did made sense. It was important, not the emotional mayhap of a teenager. It was necessary, not the misguided secrecy of a boy that had never learned to trust adults.

And talking about one thing while making hints about something entirely else had turned out to be a lot of fun. Like the taunts and insults he and Draco used to trade these days. For people who didn't know about their lessons, meaning the whole school except Hermione, they were hating each other with a passion. To Draco, Hermione and himself however, their insults were well known teases and insider jokes, and more than once had he found amusement dancing in Hermione's or Draco's eyes when he had placed an especially well phrased remark.

Harry was interrupted in his thoughts about the joys of subtlety when he felt Hermione to his left stiffen and looked up into the stricken face of Ron, who was standing at the opposite side of where they sat on the Gryffindor bench.

"Morning Harry,… Hermione," Ron began, clearly nervous about how to proceed. "Would you mind if I sat down…"

Hermione's body had started vibrating in anger like the strings of a violin. Hastily, Harry swallowed his toast and jumped up from the bench, glad that they had chosen seats at its very end. He crossed over to the other side, in his mind the image of Hermione crouching over Ron, her knife ready to strike.

"Another time, Ron," He said, grabbing Ron's elbow and leading him away from Hermione, who was glaring at Ron as if he was something slimy having crawled from the gutters. "There's something I'd like to talk with you about…"

He led Ron to the other end of the long bench and ignored how first years scrambled out of their way as they approached. He had long ago resigned to his status as celebrity and to the awe he inspired in the kids. At least it guaranteed him a seat wherever he went, and if he looked stern enough like he did now, nobody would dare come too close.

Ron was delighted when he heard that they wanted him to join the Inner Circle and train with him. Harry's warning that Hermione was still extremely angry and he had better keep away from her for a while sobered him a bit, but not as much as Harry would have hoped for.

Ron's happiness died, however, somewhere between the fact that Snape was the Spymaster of the Order and to be respected by Ron if he wanted to become a member, that Hermione's and Snape's relationship would never be discussed and that Draco had joined, too, and was considered a friend to both him and Hermione.

"You, friends with the ferret?" Ron had asked, clearly disgusted, and Harry had sent him a glare that silenced the redhead immediately. Ron had probably never seen him scowl like that, but he had missed two months worth of training by Draco and relatively close contact with Snape and Hermione's Slytherin side. That could teach a man a lot of things.

They finished speaking long before Ron had finished breakfast, and Harry rose and left the Great Hall with a feeling of deep relief. He had never noticed it before, but it was so _difficult_ to talk to Ron. One had to explain _everything_, even the most basic conclusions, and Harry finally understood how Hermione had often felt over the years, when she had had to spell out everything to her friends.

But when he had closed the huge door behind him and walked up the staircase, it soon became clear that he would not be left alone this morning. For, standing in the hallway with his eyes fixed on the stairs, clearly awaiting him and him alone, was Justin Finch-Fletchley.

"Justin," Harry greeted him, not sure how to react to the boy that had tried to lure him to muggle London over Christmas. "I didn't know you were back!"

In answer, Justin opened his mouth, stuttered something unintelligible, and closed it again, while red spots appeared on his otherwise unnaturally pale face.

Harry waited for a reaction, but when Justin just opened and closed his mouth in growing insecurity, he felt an acute pity.

"Does the Headmaster know you're here?" He asked, hoping that a question as simple as that could snap Justin out of his stupor. Obviously, it could.

"Yes," The Hufflepuff answered after another moment of paling and reddening in various parts of his face. "I… returned only this morning from my parents. He placed some spells on me, and made me a member of…" His voice trailed away, leaving the sentence unfinished. Obviously, Dumbledore had thought it prudent to include a Fidelius in the charms put on Justin, and the way the boy had been ready to flaunt the Order's name in the corridors proved that decision only too wise.

Harry chose to ignore that he would have shown the same crude lack of discretion a few months ago.

"I know," He answered, trying to tell Justin that he understood both the information the Hufflepuff wanted to give and the barriers that hindered him. "Better not talk about that here, though."

Justin nodded hastily, the expression in his eyes still a mixture of desperation and determination Harry couldn't quite place.

"So, are you going to return to classes, then?" Harry asked when it became clear that Justin had fallen mute again.

The Hufflepuff nodded. "I will have to work hard to catch up," He said in a slightly dejected tone, and Harry remembered that he had never been one of the best in class. "But I'm glad to be back, now that the danger is over," He hesitated, not sure how to phrase his next thought. "Do you know why I…" He then tried to continue, only to have his voice vanish again in the middle of the sentence.

Harry nodded in answer. "Your parents alright, then?" He asked.

He had been shocked when Hermione and Draco had told him about MacNairs plot to control Justin, and relieved when his parents had been freed and Justin had gone to join them shortly after Snape and Hermione had… disposed of MacNair. Harry still wasn't sure how that last part had come to pass, but he had learned enough by now to prefer not knowing some things.

"Yes, yes, they are," Justin answered, and with Harry unable to think of any other questions that could be asked in the out in the open, they lapsed into an uneasy silence again.

"Harry, I…" Justin finally broke the rising tension, just when Harry had resigned himself to remain standing uselessly in the middle of the corridor for the rest of the day. "I… I wanted to apologize."

Not having expected this, Harry's head jerked up and he met Justin's eyes with an expression of honest confusion. "Whatever for?" He asked.

"For… spying on you," Justin answered, cringing miserably. The red spots had obviously won the war of colours and were rapidly spreading on his face. "On you and your friends. And… for writing you that letter and trying to get you into danger. It was a stupid thing to do, and a selfish one. And I can understand if you never want to talk to me again, but I just wanted to say that I'm really, really sorry about it all."

For a moment, pity and irritation warred in Harry. He knew by experience how terribly feeling guilty and stupid was, and the pressure Justin must have been under over the last months was probably more than Harry cared to imagine. But really, how old was the Hufflepuff? When forced to choose between the safety of his parents and what was right he had chosen his parents, and who could blame him for it? But how could he even hope to apologize for the decision he had made? Did he expect Harry to absolve him and tell him to be a good boy from now on?

For a moment, Harry was badly tempted to tell Justin that he knew well enough how the Hufflepuff felt, that he had felt much worse when his godfather had died because of the stupid mistakes he had made, or when he had found out that his best friend had turned spy and he hadn't even noticed, and that the feeling would never, never go away, but then he took one good look at Justin's face and decided that it wasn't fair to heap such a speech on the boy. He was, after all, still a child.

_He is of the same age as you, Hermione or Draco_, A voice whispered inside him, but Harry shook his head unwillingly. There was more to being an adult than just the years, and Justin definitely didn't have it.

Having probably misinterpreted Harry's gesture, Justin turned a bright red all over, the white surrendering to its overpowering foe. _Hail to the victorious spots_, Harry thought for a moment, then turned serious immediately.

"I forgive you, Justin," He said, his voice projecting calmness and control like Draco had taught him. "You must have been in a terrible position, and no one would blame you for wanting to protect your family."

"But I should have…" Justin disagreed feebly, and it took all of Harry's inner control to keep the irritation from his voice and face. _Yes, you probably should have_, he thought, _But what use is it to say so now?_

"I have made much worse mistakes," He answered instead. That much was, at least, completely true. "And I am better prepared for such situations by now than you. No one will hold a grudge against you, and if I understand you correctly, you now have a chance to fight back against those who wronged you."

Justin's face had relaxed when he understood that Harry was really forgiving him, and he opened his mouth to answer when suddenly, all colour vanished from his face, leaving him deadly pale.

_The victorious reds have quarrelled among their party and committed suicide_, Harry thought, then asked aloud: "What's the matter, Justin?"

His question was answered a moment later when Hermione appeared to his left. He was used to her noiseless movements by now, and was much too fascinated by the strange things Justin's mouth was doing to react to her directly.

"Justin," Hermione greeted the Hufflepuff in a warm, friendly tone. "I'm glad to see you well and back. Are your parents alright?"

Fear, growing panic and the erratic movements of Justin's mouth were all the answer she got. Harry wondered whatever this could be about when he suddenly remembered something Draco had told him, how he and Hermione had used Justin to let information leak to Voldemort.

"Justin," He said slowly. "Professor Dumbledore _did_ tell you about Hermione, didn't he?"

To his left he heard a tiny sigh and an irritated muttering, too silent to be noticed by Justin, who was completely taken over with shock anyway. Slowly, the Hufflepuff managed a nod.

"Then you know there's nothing to worry about with Hermione," Harry continued, but Justin didn't seem so sure about that point, for he didn't even manage the nod.

"Justin? Is everything alright?" Justin managed to break the dead stare he had fixed on Hermione and half turn around to Harry, to fix pleading eyes on him.

"Yes…," He answered after a moment. "Yes, I'm alright, but Harry, do you know that Hermione… with Mr Malfoy…" Again, his voice trailed away, and this time Harry couldn't keep his irritation entirely away from his face.

"That's not something we should talk about here, Justin," He repeated. "And I thought the Headmaster _had_ explained."

"Yes… but…Malfoy!"

And again, Justin's face lost all colour to leave a white that Harry had not imagined possible on a human skin. Steps were approaching behind them and he turned around, not willing to let this increasingly embarrassing and dangerous situation be witnessed by anybody else. But to his relief, it was only Draco who approached them quickly, his face fixed in an angry frown.

"What is going on here?" He asked, coming to stand on Harry's right side. "A little conspiracy I should know about?" And then, noticing the trembling Hufflepuff in front of them for the first time: "Justin. I didn't know you were back!"

As if these last words were enough to undo whatever courage Justin had left, the boy turned around and fled the corridor as if chased by a pack of werewolves.

The three of them stared after him with expressions that varied from nonplussed to highly amused.

"I like that reaction," Draco commented after a moment, his voice more than smug. "When I will be the ruler of the world, I shall train everyone to react exactly like that wherever I walk by."

Hermione snorted. "Dream on, Malfoy," She said, and there was just enough venom in her voice to snap both Draco and Harry back into their roles.

"You can't even imagine what I dream of, mudblood," Draco sneered, then turned around to Harry with disgust in his eyes. "I'll get you, scarhead."

Harry raised his chin in defiance and allowed his eyes to go cold. "You wish, Malfoy," He answered, confirming their silent agreement on another staged fight after Defence, and Draco scowled at him for a moment, then walked away, his robes swirling behind him in a truly Snape-like fashion.

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Hermione didn't know whether to be irritated or amused as she walked to the Defence classroom, Harry at her side.

Justin's reaction had been typical, and apart from Ginny, her former friends had been walking on eggshells around her ever since they had found out. She wasn't looking forward to them entering the Order or even only participating in the duel training as planned. Everything she said or did would be under close scrutiny, and she really didn't want to receive mindless stares every time she did something they hadn't expected.

But on the other hand, Justin no longer daring to talk to her was no great loss, and the expression on his face as he had turned and fled had been priceless. _I just have to keep Draco in the vicinity, _she decided, _Together, we seem to be quite overpowering. _The thought of how the students would behave when they saw her interact with Severus crossed her mind, but then they reached the classroom and she shifted her concentration to their surroundings again.

They were early for Defence, most of the students hadn't yet dragged themselves away from the breakfast table. Remus looked up from the desk he was sitting at and grinned at them for a moment before returning his attention to the papers he was marking.

Hermione smiled back and took her place in the front row where she usually sat with Harry.

"When he saw the ferret, I thought he would faint," She whispered to him and he smirked.

"Sure was close," He answered. "Do you have some time tonight? Me and Lav wanted to tell you about some research before the study group starts."

Hermione could feel a content warmth rise inside her. Harry had become so good at this game! A month ago he would he stammered, blushed and ruined the sentence by looking around him as if he was trying to hide what he said. Now, it seemed to all the world as if he hadn't said anything unusual at all, although he had in fact told her that Draco and he wanted to discuss something with her before the Order meeting started.

They had invented a study group to justify their usual absence from the Common Room in the evening, and information who belonged to it varied, depending on whom they talked to. But as the only other member of their group was, in fact, Draco, every name Harry could have used referred to him.

"I'd love to," She answered with an apologetic look. "But I have too little time as it is. During class, I have to work on my homework and during lunch hour I must concentrate on those Defence exercises I'm working on. This afternoon is scheduled as an office hour for the Head Girl, and after that I must go and work on my special assignments. I don't even know whether I will manage to come to the study group tonight – I have a feeling that a student in distress might need my help."

She sighed. It was true, she _did_ love spending time with Harry and Draco, but her timetable was so full these days, and she had not only her spy and Order work to do, but also keep up her identity as top student and Head Girl, and most of the days didn't seem to have enough hours for her.

"Alright," Harry said, his eyes wide. "We can do it some other time."

He looked dazed as if he found it hard to believe that she could fit all that into a single day. "Special assignments" as well as "students in distress" were code words for her spy work and Death Eater meetings, and although she had never explained what they did in so many words, her "Defence exercises" were spent with Snape.

_I wonder what life is like when the day _has_ enough hours_, she mused silently, _When free time is more than the few minutes stolen in between the tasks one has to fulfil. I wonder what it is like to spend a whole weekend with friends or… other people_.

She remembered her afternoon with Severus, how he had cooked and told her stories, and she thought about the few evenings they had managed to spend entirely with each other, curled up on the sofa and just talking, or stealing out of the castle and walking the forest in disguise. _Probably marvellous_, she thought with longing, but then she banished the little fantasy and retrieved ink, quill and parchment from her bag. It was time to start on that Potions essay the new professor had given them.

While their classmates slowly filed into the room and where greeted by Remus, she unrolled the parchment, pretended to hesitate for a moment and then placed a nonverbal spell on it. She unscrewed the ink bottle, dipped the quill in and began to write the title of what would become another maddeningly long essay: "The consequences of British democracy on the healing powers of Athelas, its classification and general use in Potions of the twentieth century".

Pausing for a moment, she put the quill to the side, looking to all the world as if she was checking over what she had written. But instead of the words she had put down, the headline on the parchment read nothing but "….", and she nodded in satisfaction.

She had developed this lorem-ipsum-charm, as she called it, during sixth year, officially to keep her lazy class mates from always copying her homework, but her real reason had been the necessity to keep notes and written plans for her more secret activities, without risking anybody in the crowded Common Room discovering them by accident or her friends becoming distrustful about her hiding what she wrote.

Of course she could use code languages just as well, but while those could be broken with deciphering charms, this spell was a highly complex illusion that adjusted to the amount of words she wrote down. As it was, her fellow Gryffindors had become quite used to it, and while they often would mutter that it was "unfair" how Hermione kept her notes from them, nobody would think twice about what she did.

She looked over to Harry, who mouthed "Potions?", and nodded, not bothering to hide her frustration. Harry smirked.

"It's your own fault," He told her, grinning superiorly. "Why did you have to volunteer for that socio-alchemy project?"

"I thought it might be a challenge," She whined in answer, knowing that Harry would understand her reasoning: after all, taking the most difficult assignment was exactly what the old Hermione would have done, and, to be honest, she found this obscure branch of Potions research quite interesting. Not that she had time to pursue her interests these days in the depths she would have liked to.

"Well, have fun with your challenge then," Harry told her smugly and returned his attention to the front of the room, where Remus had risen to greet them all once more.

While she listened to their teacher introducing another unit about dark creatures, these ones far more complicated and dangerous than the boggarts and hankypanks they had covered during third year, she composed the essay, first in her mind and then on paper. The work progressed nicely.

She had already assembled the information and sources she would need last night in Severus' library, cross-checking the textbooks she consulted carefully to make sure that she chose only what could also be found in the library, and the only thing left was to assemble them into something resembling a logical argument and adding her own thesis.

Every now and then, she could feel Harry's eyes resting on her. Both Harry and Draco where still awed by her ability to concentrate fully on one thing while still registering everything that went around her. Although her attention towards Remus' lesson was marginal at best, she could still follow every word and knew that her mind would record the lecture carefully for further use.

That was why she gave no outward sign of surprise or distraction when she heard Remus call out her name, but simply raised her head and put her quill down, every inch the diligent student who had copied down every word the teacher had said.

"Sniffers are magical creatures of the size and outer appearance of winged moles," She answered, her mind automatically procuring the information Remus' question had requested and putting it into orderly sentences. "Their ability to "sniff" magic through organs situated in their naval cavity draw them towards objects and persons carrying dark energies While they cannot be considered dark per se, Sniffers feast on this type energy, a fact that has caused scientists to speculate about a distant relation between them and dementors for years."

She turned her head left and right, saw that her classmates were scribbling her words down wildly as they usually did whenever Hermione answered a question, knowing that her answer was probably slightly better than that of the textbook, and nodded with satisfaction.

"Excellent, Miss Granger," Remus announced happily, but there was something in his eyes, some expression slightly sharper than usual, that made her snap into high alert mode immediately. "Five points for Gryffindor. As they are neither dangerous nor dark in their nature, these are the creatures we'll begin with tomorrow. As a preparation, I want you all to go over pages 74 to 80 in your textbooks and hand in one and a half inches of parchment on how Sniffers could be used and when they might become dangerous. That's all for today, class."

While she slowly secured and put away her things, Hermione let the last three minutes replay in her mind. There had been something Remus had wanted to tell her, his expression had alerted her to that. But only after she had gone over her own answer to his question did she finally understand. _Their ability to "sniff" magic through organs situated in their naval cavity draw them towards objects and persons carrying dark energies. _ Her own voice whispered in her head. Dark energy like that of the Mark blemishing her left forearm.

Inwardly, Hermione cursed, but her expression remained that of a slightly overeager girl looking forward to her next lesson. She nodded to Remus, her face turning utterly serious for a moment to show him that she had understood, then headed out of the classroom as one of the last students.

Only when she had rounded the corridor and saw Harry and Draco standing opposite each other, facing off like two old Western heroes during high noon, did she remember that they had planned for another fight to take place. For one moment, she was badly tempted to turn around and pretend she hadn't noticed, but when she didn't stop them, they would have to go on until one of the teachers did, and seeing that Remus had shown no intention to leave his classroom that could take some time.

"Potter," Draco sneered, his face twisted into an ugly grimace. "Playing the hero again? Where are your friends? Hiding under the bed because they're afraid you've gone mad?"

Hermione tuned their insults and taunting out, not being in the mood for it at the moment. She made sure that her face wore the appropriate look of disgust and hate as she fixed her eyes on Malfoy, but inside she was wandering what the best course of action would be. She couldn't let a Sniffer come near her, or her classmates would find out entirely too much about their Head Girl's activities. But there would be no way of avoiding them during Defence lesson, which left only one option.

She would have to catch a virus, something nasty enough to keep her from class, but not so bad that it trapped her in the infirmary. She watched several harmless and a few not so harmless spells flash past her and the growing audience, her wand tightly in hand in case some spell hit an innocent bystander while in her mind she quickly went through the list of magical maladies she had prepared months ago for a scenario like this.

Fixing her mind on one that would be easily enough to imitate – she had to fool Madame Pomfrey, after all – she nodded inwardly and then stepped forward to stop the increasingly dangerous duel between her two friends. They had had enough fun for today.

"Harry," She screeched, widening her eyes and thinning her voice so that it sounded slightly hysterical. "This is dangerous! Stop it this instance!"

"He insulted my parents, Hermione," Harry shouted. "I will not allow that Death Eater in training to say things like that about my family."

In the safety of her mind, Hermione sighed. So Harry was aiming for the melodramatic today. Well, she could certainly outdo Harry Potter in that regard.

Throwing herself towards him so that she half collided with his shoulder, she grabbed Harry's sleeve and blinked rapidly, a movement that would make her eyes appear wet and teary.

"Harry," She announced loudly. "He's not worth it. Please Harry," She let a slight sob invade her voice and lowered it dramatically, as if she was sharing important and grave news. "Remember your NEWTs! You could get into so much trouble!"

For a moment, Harry's mask of anger slipped and she could see his lips twitching wildly. _See, that's how it's done_, She thought and heard and angry sound coming from Draco. For the rest of the group it probably sounded like a reaction to the mudblood stepping in, but Hermione knew that Draco had seen Harry's blunder.

It had become a competition between Draco and her over the last weeks – Draco would train Harry not to react to any outward influence and Hermione would try to break her friend's composure. This time she had won, and all three knew that she would tease both Draco and Harry mercilessly over this.

It was time to end the show. "Please, Harry," She said again. "I'm feeling not that good. Could we… could we just go?"

After a moment of faked hesitation, Harry nodded, recognizing her signal to break it up.

"Alright, Hermione," He agreed reluctantly. "Let's leave the ferret to himself."

That said, he lowered his wand and directed a last glare at his mock enemy, who glared back with the condensed malice of six years in Slytherin. Then, Hermione took Harry's hand and led him away from the crowd of people, keeping him securely in her grip until they were alone.

"If we don't see each other tonight," She said, hugging him goodbye and sending him a grin. "Don't worry if I'm not in class tomorrow. I have decided that I will catch a virus this afternoon. Greetings to Lav."

She winked, waved him a goodbye and left him standing in the corridor, eager to attend to her business. Falling ill was a lot of work, after all.

0o0o0o0o

A/N: There you are: a nice, long chapter about classes and everyday life. The next update will introduce Ron into the Order and reveal some more of Hermione's and Severus' secrets to the Inner Circle. Stay tuned!

The title of Hermione's Potions essay is, of course, an allusion to "The Lord of the Rings". Athelas is the plant that Aragorn, the later king, uses for healing. The background behind it is that in the middle ages and way beyond that, people of royal blood were believed to have special healing powers, and Tolkien invented Athelas to aid his personal king's healing. Introducing democracy to Great Britain has, of course, killed off this believe in the king's or queen's powers, and thus it must affect Athelas.

The lorem-ipsum-spell Hermione uses is derived from a technique developed sometime in the middle ages, used to make layouting easier. Instead of some real, readable text, gibberish Latin is formed to paragraphs. This helped the printers not to be diverted from the layout as they aren't able to read the text. The technique is still used is nowadays layouting-processes. For more information see the wikipedia article.

That said, feed the author: review!


	48. My Mind To Your Mind

**My Mind to Your Mind**

As Hermione had predicted, she couldn't attend the Order meeting that night. Over the last three months, Voldemort's calls had increased from irregular meetings, mainly used to taunt and torture the new mudblood in their midst, to a frequency that made her attend nearly every Inner Circle meeting.

Although this meant that she was out and about three to four times a week with each event leaving her on an adrenaline high and slightly the worse for wear, the meetings themselves were less aggravating by far. Naturally she was punished – she didn't expect anything else when her Dark Mark began to burn, but these punishments were not much worse than what any member of the Inner Circle had to suffer.

The greatest danger by far was not Voldemort but the other Death Eaters, jealous and aggressive towards her, who had been trying time and again to ambush her before or after meetings, to teach her "what her real place was". But Hermione was powerful enough by now among the Death Eaters to have her own supporters, two or three freshly introduced members that would happily climb over her to reach Voldemort, but could easily be manipulated to inform the Dark Lord of his follower's actions towards his pet mudblood.

Needless to say that He had not been pleased, and neither had the Inner Circle when they had suffered from his reaction.

Even Lucius Malfoy was careful around her these days. Of course he called for her, and of course she followed his beckoning. He was, after all, Voldemort's right hand man, and not in her dreams would she have dared cross him as long as she depended on his good will. But it seemed that Voldemort had set invisible limits for how far he could go with her, limits even Lucius dared not cross.

And so he might beat her, or find other ways to hurt her, but never to an amount that was truly threatening. Strange as it was, the worst about the meetings these days were the things she was forced to do, not the things that were done to her. And for the first time in her life, Hermione found it possible to imagine how someone could live this way, could spend his days forgetting what he was doing at night and spin a web of illusions around these hidden horrors until he believed in the grandeur and justice of his cause.

But still, every cell of her being was longing for the day when all this would be over, and her every waking moment was spent working for that day and their victory.

When she had returned to their chambers that night, Severus had still been awake. He had looked up to acknowledge her presence and had sent her a warm smile, telling her exactly how relieved he was to see her back safely, but had then returned his concentration to the book he was reading, knowing well enough by now that a shower and change of clothes came first after a meeting.

On her return to the library, she found a pot of freshly prepared tea and a heap of muffins waiting for her. They were still warm. Obviously, Jane had stayed up, too, and decided to prepare a midnight snack for them. Not that Hermione would complain about the little luxuries Jane tended to bestow on them now and then.

"How are you feeling?" Severus now asked, and she walked over to him, grinning.

"Oh, terribly," She joked. "I feel that heaviness in my bones. Must have caught something. I will visit the infirmary first thing tomorrow, even before breakfast."

Slowly, she reached out for the back of his head, enjoying the feeling of his silky hair running along her fingertips. She lowered her head to his and kissed him, gently and slowly. He leaned into the kiss, then broke it after a few seconds.

"You shouldn't do that," He told her seriously. "Or I might catch your disease, and who will prepare your chicken soup, then?"

"I sincerely hope I will be force fed nothing of the sort," She replied.

In answer to that, Severus' expression turned downright evil. "Perhaps not chicken soup," He drawled. "But with the condition you are soon to find yourself in, you will need to take a rather large amount of Potions. And who will have to administer them if not the long timed Potions Master?"

Feigning shock, Hermione let her jaw drop deliberately. "And I had thought our new Potions Mistress would do that," She whined. "She has a much nicer character, and I'm sure _her_ potions will taste of strawberry."

"She will put our whole profession to shame," Snape grumbled. "Brewing tasty potions. I do recall there's something in the oath we take about always meeting the required standards of nastiness, both in behaviour and brewing."

Hermione sighed. "I do believe the world would be a better place without Potions Masters."

Now it was Severus' time to feign shock, and he clutched his heart with a melodramatic expression. "You cut deeply, my Lady," He exclaimed tragically.

Again, she lowered her head and placed a soft kiss on his forehead.

"Ah, but to me you are and will always be my Spymaster," She whispered, her breath softly teasing his brow. She chuckled when he closed his eyes in pure pleasure.

"I think I like you when you're ill," He whispered back, his voice a caress running down her spine. "You're much more manageable that way."

"Much, much more," She agreed, resting her forehead against his and closing her eyes as well, to fully taste the rare moment of calm.

It would not last long. One of the tapestries glowed golden and a knocking sound alerted them to someone requesting entrance. Severus cupped her cheek, his thumb softly stroking the base of her skull, then he ended the contact, rose, and strode over to the row of tapestries. The way he walked clearly showed her his reluctance to break the moment, and she sighed, returning to the sofa and pouring herself a cup of tea.

Severus entered to open the magical door, and a moment later, the Headmaster stepped from the golden glow of transition.

"Severus, I have the information you requested," Dumbledore began, then interrupted himself when he saw her sitting calmly by the fireside library.

"Good evening, Miss Granger," He said, and she nodded and smiled in greeting. "I trust to find you well this evening? We missed you during the meeting."

"Very well, thank you, Headmaster. Though I should inform you that I will catch a dangerous virus tomorrow, due to Remus' curriculum," She answered.

"Ah, yes, the sniffers," The Headmaster answered with a smile. "Remus already told me about that. I gather you have an appropriate illness prepared and will remain in these rooms for the next few days?"

She nodded. "We worked on a potion that used feathers in Potions class, so I thought the Raven Pocks would be suitable," She told him. Raven Pocks were extremely irritating but not dangerous at all. It was a magical disease caused by an allergic reaction to the elemental magic contained in some Raven's feathers, and the victim would sprout black patches of feathers all over her body, accompanied by fever and severe headaches. The voice, too, was affected by turning into a rather ugly croak. It usually took three to five days for the symptoms to vanish, and even Madame Pomfrey wouldn't force the Head Girl to run around with black feathers growing over her face.

"Ingenious, my dear," The Headmaster told her, beaming one of his benevolent smiles.

"Thank you, Professor," She said, then shared a short look with Severus.

"Should I leave you to your business?" She asked. It was only a question dictated by politeness, as Severus would inform her fully about their talk's topic afterwards, anyway, but although everyone in the room knew it, Dumbledore was still the Leader of the Order and Severus their Spymaster, and both positions demanded respect.

"Oh no, my dear, that won't be necessary. I just wanted to hand over these files and ask one question, which concerns you as much as Severus, perhaps more."

Hermione's heart fell. She knew what this would be about.

"Would you like to take a seat and some tea, Headmaster?" She enquired, remembering her manners.

"Every other night my dear," He declined happily. "But I am awaiting a late firecall which I wouldn't like to miss.

Having delegated the politeness to her as his Lady of the House, Severus didn't bother hiding his dislike for the situation.

"This is about the Weasley boy, I presume, Albus?" He asked, and was rewarded with a nod.

"So he did talk with you. He told me as much," Dumbledore stated, and Hermione shared a short, amused look with Severus. Of course the Headmaster had known exactly with whom Ron had talked before he had come here. It simply wasn't in his nature not to know, and a mind as straight and unprotected as Ron's was very much the equivalent of a mental howler. One had to take special caution not to listen in on his thoughts.

"He approached me tonight and requested his introduction into the Order. Assuming that you two and Harry would agree to this, I could see no problem with it. The only question that remained was how far to include Mr Weasley."

Hermione nodded slowly, acknowledging the implicit question but making no move to answer it. Part of her wanted to tell him that he should be restricted to training sessions alone, or the once a week meetings the Order held, but the larger part of her knew better.

"Miss Granger?" Dumbledore asked gently, probably assuming an inner struggle but not being able to read her. If Ron was a howler, she was a trunk, locked and bolted, giving no indication of her contents at all.

She could feel Severus' eyes on her, and it was his silent encouragement that brought her to a decision.

"I believe that is for the Order to decide, Headmaster," She finally answered. "My relationship with Ron may be… difficult at the moment, but that has nothing to do with the work we do. He should be proposed and presented to the Order like everyone else."

She raised her head to see Severus' nod in silent agreement, accepting her decision.

"I'm glad you say so, my dear," The Headmaster sounded relieved. "I would have, of course, respected your wishes, but Mr Weasley will be a valuable addition to our ranks. And perhaps, in time, you will come to…"

She gave him one look, one single look, but it was enough to silence him. That one look had drawn a line and dared him to cross it. Do not meddle, it told him, and Dumbledore was not considered the wisest wizard of this age for nothing. He recognized danger when he saw it, and he suddenly remembered what Minerva had told him in his office, those many months ago.

_And I wonder if, in a few years time, even you will be a match for her._

"I believe that was all, then," He said, his voice slightly faint. "I had better leave, or I will miss my call after all."

He nodded his greetings to Hermione, whose eyes betrayed no sign of emotion as she mirrored the gesture, then turned to Severus and handed him the files that had been still in his hands.

"Good night, Severus," He said and received a slightly mocking smile as an answer.

"Sweet dreams, Albus," His Spymaster wished him, the expression in his face displaying a mixture of amusement and a subtle warning which the Headmaster really didn't need. _If you cross her line,_ it said, _you will also have me to deal with_.

As the Headmaster walked back through the tapestry and settled down behind his desk, he found himself wishing fervently that he never would have to cross any line Miss Granger and Severus set him.

Their enemies were to be pitied indeed.

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As Draco walked the cool, silent corridors of the dungeon, listening to every sound and checking the space behind him every other step, he wondered if the insanity running in his family line was finally taking over.

He knew that he was out of bounds, that he should be in his dormitory safe and sound, pretending to be a good little Slytherin, especially after the news he had brought Dumbledore tonight.

Stealing himself out of the Common Room and walking the dungeons by night, on his way to the private gym of the most hated traitor, number three on Voldemort's personal death list, was probably the worst thing to do right now, but he just couldn't help it.

He couldn't sleep, he couldn't relax, and he certainly couldn't pretend tonight, not with the letter he had received a few hours before, the letter that was lying innocently on the Headmaster's desk. The letter that would determine his future, one way or the other.

Glancing once more behind himself and seeing a corridor as empty as could be, Draco cast a series of detection and proximity charms under the cover of his cloak and, when he was satisfied with the results, pressed his hand on the old wooden door in front of him.

Only when he had stepped over the threshold, shut the door again and sealed it did he relax. His head met the rough wood with an audible thud as his eyes closed and he exhaled deeply.

Gods, what a mess he was in. And he had no idea at all what to do. He had seriously considered calling on Hermione or spending the night in the Order Headquarters, but even the thought of having to explain, of meeting another human being was too much right now.

This was just what he needed. A place nobody else would enter, where he was safe from prying eyes to let his masks slip and properly rebuild them again, solid and strong enough to face everything what the next days might bring.

Slowly, he started the long trip up the stairs, in his mind cursing whoever had designed this stupid winding staircase and decided not to ease the trip with a little magic. The anger kept him going, and when he finally reached the door to the gym he was panting and muttering angry swear words under his breath.

Pulling off his shoes without the usual care he displayed towards all parts of his outer appearance, he ripped the door open and stalked into the room, only to freeze barely a foot into the room.

The gym was not empty. He was not as alone as he had thought.

On the tatami mats was sitting a young, rather familiar black haired wizard, his wand trained firmly on Draco's chest.

It took Draco a moment to regain his voice, but his masks needed far less time to slide back into place.

"Potter. Shouldn't you be in your nice cosy dorm at this time of the night?" He asked, his voice more cold than it had been for a long time.

Everyone else would have bristled at this tone, or would have answered him with a question as harsh as his own, a reaction that would have prompted Draco to switch from slightly aggressive to full attack mode.

But trust Harry Potter to do the only thing weird and unexpected enough to throw Draco completely off course.

"Yes, I know I should be," The Gryffindor admitted without a moment's hesitation, seemingly not even noticing Draco's tone. "But I'm nervous about tomorrow."

That confused Draco utterly. He had expected irritation, not open trust.

"Tomorrow?" He asked, not quite up to his usual eloquence.

Harry nodded, still not acknowledging that something was wrong with Draco. "Tomorrow. When Ron and the others will be introduced to the Inner Circle," He explained.

For a moment, Draco just stared at him. He had completely forgotten about that, although there had been little else on their minds for the past few days.

"Oh. That tomorrow," He repeated weakly, and, abandoning all attempts at dignity, sat down on the mats heavily.

"Draco?" Harry's worried face appeared in his line of sight, but not even the ridiculous view of Gryffindor's Golden Boy crawling towards him like a toddler could amuse Draco tonight. "Something wrong with you?"

"Nothing. I'm fine," Draco automatically batted the question away. "Are you telling me that you're too worried to sleep?"

Even in the dim light of the torches Draco could see Harry blush with embarrassment. _We must start blood circulation control as soon as possible_, he absently made a mental note while he waited for Harry to answer.

"I know it's stupid," The Gryffindor said quietly. "But first I had a nightmare about Ron accusing Hermione and Snape of sleeping together and spilling the whole content of the pensieve. Then I had a nightmare about Snape killing Ron, which morphed into a nightmare about Hermione killing Ron, and then I dreamed about them hiding the body together. Then I couldn't sleep anymore."

"Busy night," Draco commented dryly, and could see Harry nod tiredly.

"You have no idea," He agreed.

"So what's your greatest worry: that Weasley hurts Hermione, or that Hermione kills Weasley?"

Harry sighed. "It's not only that. For the last week, I've been wondering how the Order will react when they find out about Snape and her. That relationship, mad as it sounds, is the only pure thing she has, and I'm terribly afraid of what will happen when someone takes it away from them."

"That is something I don't want to see, either," Draco agreed quietly. "Remember the way she was during October and November, when she'd bite your head off whenever you looked at her the wrong way? I expected every day to hear about her death. And now, despite everything she's going through, she looks more content than I have ever seen her. So does Severus."

"They seem so happy with each other," Harry whispered. "And yet I wonder – how can they be happy in the middle of all this? How can they deal with all that madness and secrecy?" He laughed, a dry, self mocking sound. "Hell, I don't even understand why she can live with Snape. I know they love each other, but it's hard to believe."

Draco smiled. "His mind was indeed my library," He said, his tone making clear that he quoted. "And whenever it was opened to me, I entered bliss."

"What?" Harry asked.

"That's what she told me when I asked her the same question, a few weeks ago. I believe it's from some muggle book."

Harry snorted. "Considering the metaphors, I find it hard not to believe that Hermione made it up herself."

They were silent in the companionable way only good friends could be, and for a moment, Draco felt amazed at how easy it was to be with Harry these days, how natural talking and sharing thoughts came to them when four months ago they wouldn't have survived together in one room for more than five minutes.

"So, what's your excuse for being here tonight?" Harry finally asked. "Bad day with the Slytherins?"

Draco knew that Harry was handing him the explanation he needed on a silver platter, that he only had to nod and grunt noncommittally and everything would be alright. But when he opened his mouth to agree, he realized to his utter amazement that he actually wanted to tell Harry the truth, to confide the catastrophe his life had turned into this very evening.

And that was why, instead of telling some little amusing story about the stupidity of Crabbe and Goyle, he heaved a deep sigh and met Harry's eyes with an expression that revealed much more of his true feelings than he was used to.

"Hermione ruined me," He said. "Here I sit with a Gryffindor in an unplottable room in the middle of the night, and instead of planning the best way to off you, I am actually tempted to talk about my problems."

"Prat," Harry answered amiable, and Draco chuckled in answer. To his surprise, he found that the heavy feeling had lifted from his shoulders. He still dreaded the future, but it wasn't an all encompassing feeling anymore.

"Got a letter from father tonight," He began his explanation and softly rubbed his temples. "He's decided that it's finally time."

"Time for what?" Harry asked, but the underlying tension in his voice told Draco that he had, in fact, a very good idea of what was to come.

"For me to finally serve our cause. He has waited with my introduction because he didn't want to risk my discovery, but the moment I'm graduated and returns home he will carry me off to wherever Voldemort has his lair, to be marked and trained like a dog."

He could hear the bitterness in his own voice, the hardness, and found all those feelings mirrored in Harry's face.

"Fuck," Was the only thing his friend said in reply. "There's no way around it?"

Draco simply shook his head.

"He's waited for this moment ever since I was born," He said, his voice reduced to a whisper. "There's no way he'll let me off the hook. And that leaves me with two decisions."

He took a deep breath. He hadn't talked about this with anyone, and to say it aloud would make it finally real.

"I can either take the Dark Mark and try to survive until Halloween, or I must cut off all ties to my family and declare myself loyal to your side of the war."

He swallowed hard. "I know it sounds mad, but being the heir of the Malfoy clan was the most important thing in my life ever since I could think. If I refuse to follow my father's path, they will disinherit me. I will be a nothing."

For a moment, he wanted to wail and rage against the injustice of it all. Then, he remembered who was sitting opposite to him – the boy who had lost his parents before he had ever known them because of a prophecy, the same prophecy that had forced him to combat the most evil wizard this world had ever known time and again. He felt ashamed.

"I'm sorry," He whispered, nothing left of his usual pride and arrogance. "I know that's pathetic. But cutting off those ties is the only thing I can do, and it hurts to even think about it."

No answer came, and when Draco looked up into Harry's face searchingly, he saw that his friend was deep in thought.

"Perhaps not," The Gryffindor finally answered.

"What?"

"Perhaps you don't have to cut these ties, at least not before Halloween," Harry answered, his mind clearly still fixed on whatever plan was forming in his head.

"That's nonsense, Harry," Draco said harshly, not wanting to give in to the hope that was bubbling up his throat. "Both my father and Voldemort want me marked, and they will never accept a no from me!"

"Not a no," Harry answered, and suddenly there was excitement in his face. "But perhaps an even better alternative, some way that can make you more useful to them, much more useful than just another Death Eater would be!"

"Like what?" Draco asked sceptically.

"Like… an assistant Professor, staying in Hogwarts after we all have officially left," Harry offered after a moment of thought. "That would justify your staying here, and you could argue that, as a former Slytherin, you would be under closer surveillance. They cold not risk marking you. I'm sure that after Hermione graduates, they will have need for another spy in the castle, and they might even be pleased with you if you come up with such an idea."

"But how could I ever convince someone that a teacher of Hogwarts would take me as an apprentice? They all know my father's allegiances, and it has been obvious over the last years how loyal they are to Dumbledore…"

"But not the new Potions Mistress," Harry argued. "She has been neutral so far, and officially she wouldn't know that you're a Death Eater in training. You are excellent in Potions, and if Dumbledore would talk to her…"

"Potter," Draco interrupted his friend's train of thought with a determined voice. "I am quite sure that I will regret this, but I can't help to admit that you are absolutely brilliant. This might actually work."

And, hugging his knees, relief and hope finally taking over, he repeated in a whisper: "This might actually work!"

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"Shouldn't Hermione be here, too?" Ron asked as he took his place, obviously worrying that his former friend was still avoiding him.

It was Saturday afternoon, and Ron, Fred, George, healer Hestia Jones, Professor Flitwick and Professor Vectors had just been introduced into the Order. There had been a few tight moments, especially when Draco had stepped into the room and caused the Weasley twins to draw their wands and Professor Flitwick to squeak rather undignified, but apart from that, all had gone well and the Order was now easily dominated by a long row of red heads sitting opposite Harry around the enlarged table.

His question had been the first thing Ron had said apart from the thanks for his acceptance, and they had directly followed Dumbledore's official opening of the meeting. And, as with nearly everything Ron said and did these days, it was extremely untimely.

Instead of an answer, Snape just sent a glare so deadly that Ron seemed to shrink under its withering heat. He turned around, only to meet the nothing less poisonous glare of Draco Malfoy, and ducked his head.

It was the Headmaster who finally answered his question. "Yes, she normally should be here for this meeting," He agreed calmly. "But she was called away."

"Called away?" Fred, or George, Harry was never exactly sure about the twins' identities, asked. "By whom?"

"Where to?" The other twin added, and, without even sending a glance at each other, they finished in one voice: "And why?"

This time, Snape's glare encompassed the whole Weasley offspring, including Bill, who made a gesture as if to proclaim his total innocence.

"We are only five minutes into this meeting," Snape began coldly, disdain dropping from every word. "And you have already displayed ample proof of your immaturity. Could we just pretend to have gone through every single bit of adolescent joking and thus allow you to use your brains in the ways intended by their maker?"

"But we do use them that way," One of the protested.

"This is exactly…"

"The thing…"

"We were meant to do:"

"Delight and amuse our…"

"Fellow wizards."

"Now what about Hermione?"

That was one of the things Harry had always admired most about the twins – they could joke around, completely change the topic and drive everyone around them nuts, without ever forgetting what they had been talking about originally.

Although this time, he would have preferred it if Snape had managed to distract them.

It was Dumbledore who answered the question, probably knowing that Snape would not react nicely to the Weasley twins. Harry had noticed over the last weeks that whenever Hermione was absent from the castle, their Spymaster was slightly on edge, not noticeable on a conscious level, but obvious once Harry had made the connection.

With Hermione gone, Snape's reactions were just a little quicker, his replies a little sharper and his mood a little fouler. Though Harry had seen more kindness displayed by Snape over the last months than ever before, it was clearly reserved for Hermione alone, and without her, all human niceties abandoned him again.

"You are aware that we have only two official function in the Order – that of the leader, which is filled by me, and that of the Spymaster, which is filled by Severus Snape," He began his short introduction into the structure of the Inner Circle. "At the moment, we are considering creating a third office, namely that of coordinator between Inner and Outer Circle, but apart from that, everyone in the Order is considered equal, has a right to the same knowledge and must be flexible considering his tasks. There are, however, certain areas members tend to concentrate on.

"Your father," He pointed at Arthur Weasley. "Is our eyes and ears in the Ministry as Tonks is with the aurors. Draco keeps us informed concerning the views and plans of the more… traditional purebloods." The description earned a chuckle from Arthur Weasley and a raised eyebrow from Draco.

"Remus Lupin is our contact to the werewolves just as Hagrid, who belongs to the Outer Circle, manages communication with the giants. And Miss Granger," Dumbledore hesitated for a moment, not sure how to put this, then, probably considering that he was talking to Gryffindors, opted for the blunt approach. "Miss Granger is our spy in the Death Eater's Inner Circle."

Harry could hear a squeaking sound from his right and turned his head just in time to see Professor Flitwick nearly toppling from his chair, being rescued only by the steady hand of Professor McGonagall.

"Miss Granger," The diminutive teacher asked, clearly not believing his ears. "A spy?"

To his left, Harry could see Snape roll his eyes in resigned disgust. "Yes, a spy, in the Inner Circle, for more than six months. Yes, we have proof of that, no, we won't stop her, and she's definitely competent in what she does. That should answer every question you might think of, I believe."

He did not wait long enough to give anyone a chance at protest, but continued in a voice that left no place for such a thing as different opinions. "And we will not discuss this any further, I can assure you. We have far more important things to do than accommodate your sensational tendencies."

That silenced Flitwick as effectively as Vector, who had already opened her mouth to voice her own disbelief. She closed it again with an audible click.

The Weasley twins, however, were not known for either subtlety or acceptance of the rules, and while Snape looked at them with a growing wish to maim, torture and kill very clearly visible in his eyes, they stared at Dumbledore as if he had presented them with an unexpected new toy.

"Hermione…" One of them began.

"Is a spy…"

"With the Death Eaters?" They asked and Dumbledore nodded, clearly expecting some sort of shocked reaction, not having forgotten how their younger brother had dealt with this fact.

But he didn't know the Weasley twins as well as Harry did, who could not help but grin broadly when he saw the expression in their faces. If he wasn't totally misjudging, Hermione would find herself under a barrel of questions the moment she appeared, but not about how she did it or why.

Harry expected the questions to be of a more practical nature, rather like what she had found to be the best cloaking spells, how Voldemort warded his Headquarters against listening spells and what gadgets she as a real spy had found need for. They would probably develop a whole new range of products and bully her into testing them.

But, obviously, Dumbledore didn't know the intricate and slightly frightful ways of the twin's mind very well, and that was why the broad, utterly happy smile splitting their faces took him completely by surprise.

"Wicked!" Both brothers proclaimed happily, and that was the end of the topic for now.

0o0o0

But it wouldn't be the last time this evening that Hermione's job was going to occupy the minds of the Order.

They had nearly finished their evening gathering that had been efficient and punctuated with a lot of glaring and sarcastic commentary from Snape to Ron until the Gryffindor ducked whenever his former teacher's gaze moved his way, when suddenly one of the tapestries started to glow and Hermione rushed through, stumbling and nearly falling in her haste.

"Severus!" She cried, and in an instance he was by her side, supporting her and tilting up her head with his hand as they had seen him do so often over the course of the last months.

Harry knew by now how direly Hermione needed Snape's strength after the revels, but still he couldn't help but think their interaction strange. Though Snape kept her upright and his eyes were diving into hers, there was no consolation in his touch, and his face and look were as blank and emotionless as Hermione's.

They seemed… immobilized, frozen in a moment of inaction, and Harry seriously doubted that this posture could console even Hermione.

Suddenly, the spell was broken and their Spymaster snapped into action.

"Safe house four will be under attack in a few minutes," He barked while Hermione sank into an armchair, her eyes closed in fatigue and her head coming to rest on the corner of the upholstery. Before they had even taken in the information, he was already by the fireplace and had established a fire connection to the safe house.

It would have been a funny sight, normally, Snape on his knees, his head thrust through the green flames, and faint echoes of his shouting for Mundungus Fletcher reaching their ears, only that Harry was much too confused by the whole situation to appreciate it at the moment. Even the Weasley twins, he couldn't help noticing, were looking from Snape to Hermione with an expression of surprise instead of humour.

"Mundungus," Harry could hear Snape shouting. "I know that you're in, so move your ass to the fireplace immediately or it will cost you your sorry little life!"

While Snape talked to Dun in the rough tone that worked best with the petty thief, uttering sharp commands to put his things together and use his emergency portkey for transport to Grimmauld Place, Hermione didn't seem to even notice what was going on around her. Most of the Order however had sprung up at her entrance and the news Snape had shouted into the room and were now pacing up and down, avidly watching the enchanted map on the ceiling as if they could decipher this way what was going on, or merely staring at the visible part of Snape's body.

"You have to get out of there now! Leave everything behind that does not look too new or suspicious and make it quick. Death Eaters will be swarming in on you in a few minutes!"

As the Headquarter's floo connection was one way only, Dung couldn't simply come through to them. But Grimmauld Place, now safe house one after the moving of Headquarters to Hogwarts, was still protected by massive warding and sported a two-way floo connection that was keyed to Order members. Following the safety procedures Snape had set as soon as he became Spymaster, Dung would floo there to lie low until possible tracer spells or other dangers could be removed from him.

"I do not care about your stolen goods, Mundungus!" Snape could be heard again. "Just trigger the abditum spell and get out of there, or you will have deserved every single Cruciatus they will inflict on you. Now!"

Harry could see Mrs Weasley positively jump in place when that last command was shouted, loud even to their ears, but the noise level seemed to have the intended effect, for only moments later, Snape withdrew his head, took another fist of floo powder and dove into the fireplace again.

The abditum spell, Harry remembered slightly dazed while he watched Snape hurry Dung in no unclear tones, then check on the other safe houses, telling the inhabitants to lie low until further notice and again call safe house four to make sure that Dun had really left, was another ingenious little spell Snape and Hermione had invented.

Casting the spell would leave any environment in a state of neglect and abandonment, turning every inhabited house into a place full of undisturbed dust and ruin. When the Death Eaters reached the safe house, they would find nothing but an old, derelict ruin that would look as if it hadn't been in use for several years.

When Harry had found out how much Snape had changed and improved since taking over the job of Spymaster, he had been irritated at first. It had seemed quite natural to him that there were protocols regulating safety and emergency situations, and one needn't be a genius to understand that the most important protection for their work was secrecy. But like most wizards, Dumbledore simply did not do discretion. He had never been any good at it, despite his ability to surprise you with his sheer amount of knowledge.

Perhaps it took a spy to teach them secrecy and cunning, a person that was automatically covering every trace and checking every door as soon as he entered a room, to turn the Order into a professional organisation. Whatever the reason, Harry was quite happy that they had Snape for taking care of such things. And Hermione of course.

Less than five minutes after Hermione had stumbled through the tapestry, safe house four was abandoned, its inhabitant secured and its floo disconnected. Snape had moved so fast and efficient that only when he had finished every Oder member finally understood the events. Now, as suddenly as he had exploded into efficient action, all tension left his body and he walked over to Hermione.

"A cup of tea?" He inquired mildly, and she nodded without opening her eyes.

"He did get out?" She asked.

"Yes. Though he complained about the belongings he would have to leave behind. The house looks totally unused. Do you want to give me the details now, or can we wait until later?"

"Now is better, I think. Perhaps I missed something vital."

And again, Hermione opened her eyes and fixed them on Snape's. Again, silence fell heavily on them, as if both had left heir bodies and were conversing on a level no one of the others could reach.

As abruptly as before, their connection broke and Snape walked over to the mantelpiece, where he poured a cup of tea, added two spoons of sugar and handed it over to Hermione, who took it gratefully.

"I told him a thousand times not to use owls," He commented angrily.

"Of course you did," She answered calmly, sipping her tea with obvious delight. "But that's human nature for you."

"Would somebody care to explain what that was all about?" Bill Weasley inquired, his irritation barely concealed.

Nobody had dared utter a word, and even Dumbledore seemed seriously fluttered by this incomprehensible display, but now that the silence was broken, Harry heard several voices echo Bill's demand.

"Hermione reported and I reacted to the information she gave me," Snape answered, clearly not willing to explain their strange interaction.

"I didn't notice anything like a report," Remus protested, and again, Hermione and Snape shared one of their strange, silent looks.

"It would be better," She finally said, as if continuing an argument. "They wouldn't accept anything else."

"Are you sure?" Snape asked, his dark eyes examining her face critically.

She nodded wearily. "Do the honours, please. I need a moment of quiet, and another cup of tea."

"What are you two talking about, for goodness sake?" Obviously, Tonks' patience had run low. "Have you developed telepathic abilities, or what?"

Snape smiled thinly while Hermione turned away from them, ignoring the whole Order completely as if she was all alone in the room. "Aptly put, dear Tonks," He answered, and had Harry not been totally confused, he would have snorted at the Slytherin ability to turn every situation into a melodramatic scene.

"Shortly after Hermione and I began working together, we found out by accident that it is possible for two Master Legilimens to transmit and receive thoughts, images, even whole strings of memories. One needs to get used to it, but with a bit of training it becomes the most efficient way of sharing information I have ever encountered."

All of a sudden, Harry regretted that he had stopped taking Occlumency lessons in fifth year.

"You mean you can talk to each others mind?" He asked, not hiding his admiration, and Snape nodded.

"We need visual or physical contact though," He added calmly. "Apart from that, we haven't discovered limitations to the ability yet."

Judging from their expressions, half the members of the Inner Circle were dying to ask, comment or discuss this new revelation. But as usual, the twins were faster than anybody else, and again Harry didn't find it hard to predict their reaction.

"So you can quietly talk without anybody noticing?" One of them asked, and Snape nodded, clearly wishing to drop the subject.

"Even if you're across the room? Without anybody noticing?" Another nod, accompanied with a deepening glare.

"That's so cool!" The other one added, and, again in perfect synchrony, they uttered the question Harry had only waited for: "Can you teach us?"

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A/N: The quote Hermione used to explain her relationship with Severus to Draco is from "Villette" by Charlotte Bronte. In that novel, the heroine falls in love with an irascible, irritating and very sarcastic Professor. Quite fitting, I think.

This one ended a little abrupt – my apologies, but as I already said, fifteen pages per chapter is the limit I won't overstep. The alternative would have been another cliffhanger, and I try to cure my addiction to them…

Review!


	49. And Foul is Fair

**A/N:** No preview this time, people! I finished the chapter early and decided to surprise you. And it's the longest yet, too! Hurray!

0o0

**And Foul Is Fair**

"Draco," And exuberant voice exclaimed and Draco twitched unnervedly.

"There he is,…"

"Our personal reformed Slytherin…"

"Right beside our personal saviour of the world!"

"Tell me again why they became members," Draco whispered to Harry through clenched teeth, and Harry chuckled in answer.

"They are not so bad once you let go of your dignity and accept them as a natural catastrophe," He told his friend, whose painful expression told him how little consolation this was.

The Weasley twins had neatly circled in their prey and were now moving towards them when Draco suddenly shot from the sofa and towards the large oval table, simply dragging Harry along with him.

"Severus," He called out, slightly desperate, and Harry couldn't help inwardly rolling his eyes. _From the frying pan_… he thought.

"Yes," Their Spymaster, who had just only left his office, asked with less than enthusiasm. "What is it, Draco?"

"Mmmh, Harry and I have this…thing we wanted to talk with you about," Draco improvised wildly and threw a look back over his shoulder.

Snape's eyes took in the Weasley's, Harry and Draco, and for a moment Harry could have sworn that his lips twitched in amusement.

"Very well," He agreed readily. "Come into my office. We have another ten minutes until the meeting will start."

Still dragging Harry along like some puppet, Draco practically sprinted into Snape's office and sagged with relief when their former teacher closed the door behind them.

"Now, was there really something you wanted to talk about," Snape asked, the twitching of his lips more visible now. "Or was this just some less than subtle scheme to get rid of the red heads?"

As if only now realizing how much he had let his guard down, Draco straightened immediately and resumed the posture of a bored aristocrat. This time, Harry could feel his own lips twitching, too.

"Actually, there was something of rather great importance," The Slytherin announced. "Harry and I have been discussing Hermione's plan, and we think that we found a solution for one possible weakness."

Immediately all of Snape's concentration was fixed on them, and Harry had to stop himself from squirming under that intense, black gaze.

"What weakness," Snape said.

Harry wouldn't have managed more than an inarticulate gurgle, but luckily, the Slytherin by his side was immune to Snape's aura.

"As far as I know, Hermione wanted to introduce the plan to Voldemort as soon as she has risen high enough among the Death Eater ranks?" Draco asked and Snape nodded impatiently to that.

"Well, Harry and I wondered if this couldn't create suspicion – why didn't she propose it before, and why did she choose Tintagel instead of just, say, something that lies nearer to the Weasleys' place or Hogwarts. But if her plan is the answer to something, if she only proposes it in reaction to something Voldemort found out…"

This was so typically Draco. Here they stood, in the Spymaster's office with Snape's growing irritation and impatience whirling around them like an invisible cloud, and Draco couldn't help playing the drama queen. Normally, Harry would have let him tell the story in his own time, but he was all too acutely aware of the Order on the other side of the room and the meeting that was about to start, and so he cut in.

"The prophecy," He said quietly, and Draco huffed like an actor who had been pushed off stage. "We thought if one could manipulate the prophecy in a way that would make it only possible to kill me on one of the Ancient nights and at one of Ancient places, and if Hermione could give that forged prophecy to Voldemort, her plan would only be a solution to the Dark Lord's problem. Nobody would ever question it."

Something changed in Snape's eyes, and Harry couldn't say for the life of him what.

"And how could Hermione ever hope to get you out of the castle on one of this nights if you know you're vulnerable like that, Potter?"

Harry gaped. The question was just that – a question! Not a veiled threat uttered in an ominous tone, like Snape's 'What do you think you are doing?' when another one of his potions had gone awry. This time, Snape actually looked as if he was interested in his answer.

"If Hermione has convinced me to show her the memory, in a pensieve or somehow," He answered after a moment of thinking. "Couldn't she have manipulated it there and then, or cut out part of it, so that I wouldn't know the danger?"

Again, Snape stared at him with an unreadable expression, and not until the painful tightening of his chest did Harry realize that he had held his breath. In these few short months since New Year, Snape had risen high in his opinion, and he suddenly understood that he _wanted_ this man to respect, perhaps even like him, just as he wanted Draco these days to think good of him.

_To think that I called him 'greasy git' not half a year ago!_

Finally, Snape nodded. "Your idea has merit," He agreed, and Harry could feel pride swelling his breast. This was the highest compliment Snape had ever paid him.

Snape watched them for another moment, his unreadable eyes resting first on Draco, and then, considerably longer, on Harry.

"Very well," He then announced. "Prepare a detailed plan of action and the altered text of the prophecy. Be ready at the end of next week to present it to the Inner Circle."

"What, we?" Harry asked, torn between utter pride and horror at the thought of explaining this to a bunch of people so much older than him.

Snape smirked. "Yes, of course," He confirmed. "After all, it was your idea, wasn't it?"

He fixed his eyes on Harry for another heartbeat, then turned around to Draco. "Are there any news about your apprenticeship?" He asked, and Draco smirked in answer.

"We are getting there," He told his former Head of House. "I'm on my best behaviour around her and have twice stepped up to her already for added information. I mentioned my private studying and she was more than interested. As far as I know, Dumbledore plans to talk with her in two weeks' time."

Snape nodded. "Very good. We should…"

The screeching of a bird interrupted him. With two quick steps, Snape was standing by the window and ripping it open. It took him less than a moment to retrieve the message, read it and stride out of the room with his robes billowing behind him. He left the door open, a clear announcement that he expected them to leave his office, but spared them not another look.

Most of the Order had arrived by now, and all their eyes followed the Spymaster curiously as he strode, no, hastened, over to the fireplace above which an ornate mirror was hanging. Only when Snape touched a series of flowers and berries decorating the frame, and whispered a spell Harry couldn't make out did he realize that this mirror was, in fact, another means of communication.

"Robin," He said sharply. "What happened?"

Slowly, Harry moved towards Snape and the mirror, noticing from the corner of his eyes that the other Order members were approaching them, too. He stretched himself to recognize what was inside the mirror, but even when he stood on tiptoes, all he could make out was a smoky silhouette, completely unidentifiable.

"Master," A scratchy voice answered from the mirror. "Bad news, I'm afraid. We found out that Little John went home. "

"Little John," Snape asked, his voice suddenly as cold and expressionless as a glacier, reminding Harry of something he couldn't quite say. "Where?"

"Nottingham. I don't know much. Freya was the one who found him, and she only contacted me to say that he was gone and she had his briefcase. They are in Walhalla at the moment, hiding until she'll have extracted what we need. I'm sorry, Master."

"You did well, Robin," Snape answered, still without a hint of feelings. "Inform the thieves and the Northern Gods. And contact me as soon as you know more."

The shadow in the mirror nodded, and again Snape touched a series of flowers and berries, his movements quick and precise. He didn't move when the connection was cut. He just stared into the mirror as if it would reveal its secrets to him, his left hand resting on the edge of the mantelpiece, his right on a finely sculpted rosebud.

"Severus," Dumbledore finally asked when it became clear that their Spymaster wouldn't turn around of his own accord. "What was that message about?"

Now Snape did turn around, and Harry had to force himself not to back away at the view. All life seemed to have gone from Snape's face, only a slight sneer resting on his lips.

"One of my spies was found dead this afternoon, Albus," He answered, his voice the arrogant drawl Harry was so used to from his many years in Potions class. "Another spy managed to secure his body along with his coded notes and brought him to safe house seven. That's all I know."

"A spy?" Harry asked, his throat constricting in sudden worry. Remus was here, and he had already seen Hermione this afternoon. But Tonks hadn't appeared yet, and he knew that she was spying among the aurors for them. "What spy? Do we know him?"

"No, Potter," Snape answered, the sneer intensifying while he walked over to his place at the table and sat down. He was the only one. The rest of the Order crowded in little groups across the living room, watching Snape carefully. "There are many people involved in this war that you won't ever know about. Little John was one of them, and now that he is dead, his identity matters even less than before. Could we begin the meeting now? I have a busy evening ahead of me."

Harry and Remus, who was standing to his left, exchanged a long, doubtful look. Though it was hard for Snape to do anything wrong in Remus' opinion these days, he obviously thought his lack of reaction as strange as Harry did.

"I'm sorry, Severus," Remus finally said, slowly moving towards Snape, one hand extended as if in consolation. "You must be devastated about this loss. I can only imagine how you feel…"

"Overvaluing your imagination as usual, are you, Remus," Snape snarled, his voice so bitingly hard that Remus involuntarily stepped away from him and raised the hand to his face, as if to shield himself.

"There is no reason to be devastated at all. Neither is there a reason to dawdle, so if we could get going, please?"

But Remus, good Gryffindor that he was, didn't give up, and Harry could see Draco to his right roll his eyes in irritation. If Snape wanted to be left alone, Harry could clearly read in his friend's face, than that was fine. Better than to be snapped at.

"Severus, I know you are angry with yourself, but believe me, it isn't your fault. You could do nothing…"

"I would feel enormously better if you could keep your pathetic attempts at psychology to yourself, _Lupin_," Snape hissed, and somewhere along the way, his words turned into a threat. "You have no idea at all would I could do if I wanted to…"

That was it, Harry thought He knew that tone. Now, Snape was pissed off. Officially.

Usually, that meant a Potions class in hell, and from the expressions of the Order members around him, the Inner Circle wasn't much different from sixth year Potions in that regard. Remus had fallen silent, but now Flitwick and Dumbledore were giving their best to soothe him. Harry could have told them not to bother. Even Draco just ducked his head and brewed quietly when their teacher looked like that.

As the atmosphere in the room chilled down to the temperature of an ice house, Harry retreated to the far wall where the row of tapestries hung. That was why only he noticed one of them beginning to glow golden and Hermione stepping into the room.

Sparing a short smile for him, her brown eyes took in the scene in a heartbeat, and the expression in them darkened.

"What happened?" She asked Harry as Snape directed a scathing remark at Flitwick, who flinched back as if hit.

"We received message that one of our spies was killed this afternoon. When Remus tried to talk to him, he snapped into full bastard mode."

"Which spy," Hermione's voice was as cold and expressionless as Snape's had been, only minutes ago, when he had asked the question, and Harry suddenly realized from why Snape's tone had seemed familiar to him. It was the same coldness that had tainted Hermione's face and words, back then in the clearing after she had killed Theodore Nott.

"Little John," He answered.

"One of the thieves, then," Hermione thought aloud. "They were stationed around Knockturn Alley this week. Was it Robin who reported?"

"Yes, though he was found by someone named Freya."

"Strange. What were the Northern Gods doing in that area? Did he say anything else?"

"Only that she took Little John to Walhalla. What do these code names mean, Hermione?"

But Hermione didn't seem in the mood to answer any questions. She was concentrating on Snape, who had now finished Flitwick and was turning towards McGonagall.

"What did Remus tell him?"

"Only that he must be devastated and that it wasn't his fault, I think."

Something hardened in Hermione's expression.

"How stupid of Remus to say that," She hissed.

"Why? He only wanted to help."

She spared a short glance towards Harry, her face telling him clearly how little she thought of that argument.

"Severus recruited Little John personally. Of course it's his fault that he died, at least in the long run."

Harry stared at her in shock, not knowing whether his astonishment was caused by her strange comment or by the fact that, for the first time in his life, he felt the urge to actually speak in favour of Snape. But before he could make sense of his peculiar reaction, a voice decided his question for him.

"Whispering in the corner like some first years," Snape sneered from his place by the oval table. "I believe you pledged maturity to enter this circle, Potter. I always considered it lacking in you."

"Now, now, Severus, just because I don't go all pity and whiny over you, there's no need to behave like a sullen fourth year," Hermione drawled in answer, loud enough for everyone to hear, and the room froze.

Apart from Moody and perhaps Dumbledore, every single member of the Inner Circle had been at the receiving end of Snape's wrath at least once. They all knew only one useful surviving technique when his scathing eloquence was unleashed: duck, wait silently until the storm was over, and run for cover as quickly as possible.

Every single attempt to stand up against Snape when he was in a fury had been rewarded by either complete defeat or something much worse. And now, as Snape's mood had dropped to a level unknown even to his old colleagues, Hermione had gone for full attack.

They were lucky if she survived this.

"Ah, Hermione," Snape purred in a voice Harry had heard only once, back in third year, when Snape's wand had been at Sirius' throat. "Don't tell me you have something to contribute, for I have become so used to your worthless wasting of my time!"

Everybody flinched. They all knew how important Snape had become to Hermione over the last months, and Harry was badly tempted to hex his Potions Master for this nastiness. Below the belt held no comparison to this.

But Hermione just smiled, a feral smile that exposed her canines in very threatening way.

"But I wouldn't dare surprise you, Severus," She purred back, and Harry was sure that he had never heard that tone from her, not even when she had threatened to kill Ron. "For we all know how badly you react when someone challenges your all-encompassing prejudices!"

"Dear children," the Headmaster began pleadingly, but two hands shot up in a silencing gesture immediately. Harry would have been surprised and amused by this new display of their similarity, had he not been too shocked by the viciousness with which Hermione and Snape were tearing each other apart.

"You are not even old enough to understand the difference between prejudices and facts, Hermione," Snape continued as if the interruption had never happened. "Shouldn't you go back to your playthings and leave the real problems to your betters?"

"I don't see any betters here, only someone who wallows in self pity, too screwed up to admit that he isn't perfect," She retorted.

"I wouldn't expect a mudblood to understand a concept like wizarding honour!" Snape snarled, and their listeners flinched.

"Withdrawing on well known ground, are we, Severus?" Hermione mocked back, her voice as cutting as a knife. "Miss your old pals these days? Perhaps you aren't so sorry they got your spy, after all?"

"Miss Granger," Professor McGonagall's shocked voice rang through the room. "What has gotten into you, for goodness sake?"

"Merely her well known Gryffindor stupidity taking over again, Minerva," Snape hissed. "And I was surprised how long you could keep up that pretence of intelligence, girl. Nearly fooled even me!"

Suddenly, Harry felt pity for Snape. If he had learned one thing in his years with Hermione, it was that you never, ever insulted her intelligence. Everything else you could survive, but if you even hinted at a lack in that regard, you were lucky if you escaped alive. To Harry's mind, Snape had just badly miscalculated his chances.

Hermione glided over to him with the grace of a large, angry cat, and the assembled Order found themselves holding their breath. Ron and Draco, who had been at the receiving and of her vicious punch before, winced in pre-emptive sympathy. But instead of slapping her Spymaster, Hermione stopped directly in front of him, tilted her face upwards and examined him with a quirk of her eyebrow.

"Better?" She asked. And, as he nodded silently, her aggressiveness fell from her like a discarded cloak. "You're welcome," She told Snape, and to the Order's absolute amazement, he grinned at her in delight, capturing her hand in his and kissing it reverently, without a word.

"Then let's get started," She proposed, and, looking around, seemed to remember the Order members that were scattered throughout the room in silent astonishment. "Well? What are you staring at? We have a meeting to conduct."

At her words, Albus seemed to snap out of his dazed stare, resuming his usual happy self. While he bustled around, conjuring tea and hot chocolate for everyone, the rest of them took their places silently.

"Care to enlighten me what happened there just now?" Harry asked his friend as she fell into the chair beside him. "I've only seen you so aggressive once or twice, and it was always for better reasons than a bad tempered Snape."

"He was desperately trying to get angry," she simply answered. "And as I didn't want to watch him sharpening his tongue on you for the next two hours until he had worked himself into the fury he needs, I decided to do it myself. It's much faster that way."

"Why does he need to be furious?"

Hermione turned towards him. The smile that grazed her lips was wry, mocking and a bit sad at the same time.

"Ever wondered what kept him going?" She whispered. "You've met Voldemort. There are only few things that can stand against the pure terror of the Dark Lord. Real anger is one of them."

Dumfounded, Harry stared at her, but he saw nothing except honesty in her face, and a little bit of sadness. "Do you want to tell me he is… what he is, because he needs the fury to continue fighting?"

"Why do you place more value on justice than on prudence, Harry?" Hermione whispered back, her comment softened by the smile that played around her lips. "Why is Dumbledore so keen on sweets and bright colours and everything that makes the world a bit more beautiful? And why does Remus offer kindness to anybody, even though he knows it will only lead to pain for himself? We all have our means of coping."

"Yes, well, I knew that," Harry murmured, feeling extremely foolish. "But I always thought Snape behaved that way because he is a bastard."

"Oh, that's another reason," Hermione agreed happily. "The meanest bastard of them all. Isn't it a sight to behold?" She sighed contentedly, and Harry concentrated hard on his shoes, not sure whether to be shocked or amused.

In a strange and slightly twisted, Slytherin way, he realized with a shock, Hermione and Snape were rather sweet together.

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The Order's gym, situated a level above the Headquarter's, was a huge, sun filled room, five times the size of the private gym Draco and Harry had been using. Just like the Headquarters, it could only be entered through several tapestries to make sure that those who trained with them, like the few seven and sixth years from Hogwarts or selected members of the Outer Circle, still wouldn't be able to access the Headquarters and the information stored there.

Opposite the tapestry Draco, Harry and Hermione had just stepped through, a large duelling platform had been erected, which differed from the one Harry had seen – and used - in second year by its sheer size and breadth. At the left hand corner of the room, several tables were arranged that held a rich assortment of maps, diagrams and other things Harry couldn't quite make out. To the right, a large area was marked off with bright red lines on the floor.

Hermione had already told him that those indicated high level wards that would keep the other inhabitants of the room safe from everything that was fired within the markings, except of course the Unforgivables. She had used the word so lightly and calmly that Harry realized with a shudder how definitely she expected the Unforgivables to be cast in the course of their training.

When they stepped through, they were greeted by the sight of Remus, Moody, Dumbledore and Snape standing side by side as if mimicking a reception committee, and Harry couldn't help but think that he was now facing four of the five most dangerous persons currently living at Hogwarts, with the fifth, Hermione, standing at his side. The thought gave him the creeps, but in a strange way it also relieved him to know that those five were on his side, that he would fight alongside them.

This was so much better than the group he had stormed the Ministry with in fifth year. So much better.

One by one, the members of the Inner Circle arrived at the gym, and a short period later, another tapestry glowed and the Hogwarts students belonging to the Outer Circle stepped through. Harry noticed that Ron was among them and shrugged. If his former mate felt better besides Neville and Ginny than with Draco and Hermione, he would let him be. Things would turn difficult soon enough.

"Right then," Moody announced roughly when the group was complete. "This is our training room, where we will prepare you for war. Here you will sweat, and curse, and bleed until Remus, Severus and I decide you're fit for battle. Here you will…"

Harry could hear Tonks to his left groan. "Please, Moody," She called out. "Don't give us the whole auror prep talk! Stick to the important bits!"

Instead of an answer, Moody just grinned devilishly, and Harry could see several students around him pale. Neville gulped audibly, and Ginny had grabbed her wand fiercely. But not only the students were nervous, it seemed. Many of the Inner Circle members had fought and survived the first war, but it had been years since the last real duel for many of them. Harry could see Molly Weasley fidget about the braid that kept her hair secured, and Mr Weasley pull in his belly, and had to hide a grin.

"Oh, we will yet see what the important bits are, Tonks," Moody growled, and Tonks chuckled amusedly. Well, she had it easy, Harry couldn't help thinking, she had, after all, completed the auror's training. He however knew nothing about duelling but his Dark Arts lesson and that one, miserable experience in second year.

"But before we start," Remus took over, and Harry was relieved to listen to the raspy but open and friendly voice of the werewolf instead of Moody's growling. "Let me introduce you to the room."

He smiled in the way that made very clear how proud he was of this gym, and Harry found it easy to smile back.

"We shielded the gym," Remus started. "And warded it so that no sign of the spells performed in here will ever leak outside. In addition to that, Severus developed a spell that will erase all record of dark spells from your wands. You are free to practice everything in here, including the Unforgivables."

Harry could hear Tonks and Shacklebolt exchange whispers. For an auror, such a spell was devastating news, and once more Harry felt glad that Snape belonged to their side.

"As you can see, we divided the room into three main areas. The duelling platform is, of course, self explanatory. We _will_ use our time here to hone our duel skills, of course, but for any other type of fighting practice, we designed this," He pointed to the area marked by red lines.

"No spells fired in there will leave the area, and the room can be adapted to imitate different environments, including our battle scene at Tintagel."

This time, whispers erupted among the students, as a battle at Tintagel was total news to them.

"The left part of the room will be dedicated to strategy. Those who will be concerned with planning our tactics or who feel confident that they don't need further training will spend the time to discuss our options and best procedure there. Any questions?"

After waiting a moment, Remus nodded and informed them that they would form different groups. Those who wanted to duel and train on their own could use the platform to their liking, those who wished to concentrate on physical training were to go with Moody and those interested in more basic exercises should follow him.

Unsurprisingly, the students immediately flocked around Remus, obviously relieved that they wouldn't have to deal with blood-and-sweat-Moody yet.

There was a moment of irritation when Hermione stepped away from them and, without a moment's hesitation, headed for the strategy group to their left, where she was welcomed with smiles and nods by Dumbledore, Snape, Tonks and Shacklebolt.

"What's she doing over there with the grown ups?" Neville whispered to Ginny, who rolled her eyes.

"Don't you remember what she did in the forest, Neville?" She whispered back, and Neville gulped again. "Seeing that, I don't believe that she needs those 'basic exercises' we're going to work on, do you?"

It was Draco who caused another bout of irritation when he grinned once at Harry and departed for the group of advanced duellers clustering around the platform. Bill, Fred and George who had joined that group, too, seemed ready to send him back, but McGonagall quietly walked over to Draco, greeted him with a nod and requested his partnership for the first group duel.

Harry could't help but smile when he saw the blond Slytherin and the stern Gryffindor stand side by side, causing the Weasleys to stare at their former Head of House in confusion.

"Oh, he's too good to train with us, is he?" Ron grumbled to his right, and Harry turned around with a sigh. This would get downright irritating soon.

"Yes, Ron, he is," He answered simply, and was rewarded with another stare of confusion, this time from his own group. "He is a Slytherin, for goodness sake, son of Lucius Malfoy. He has been training dark and offensive magic for years. He could probably wipe the ground with any of us."

"So he's using dark magic, is he?" Ron asked triumphantly. "I knew it!"

"So are Hermione, or Snape," Harry answered. "So is Remus, as a matter of fact. And if you don't like who I'm friends with, Ron, you can leave now!"

The fact that he considered himself friends with the Slytherin caused another round of shocked looks and whispers, but Harry just ignored them and followed Remus to the right corner of the room.

The exercises were just as Remus had described them: basic. For Harry and the others, who had kept the DA going for nearly two years, attacking and blocking, dodging and shielding had become second nature, and Remus was pleasantly surprised by their abilities, so pleasantly that he decided to skip a good part of the training plan after half an hour of spell casting had yet to show them lacking in any regard.

Still, even Ginny and Luna, who were one year younger than the others, kept up easily until their DADA teacher called the training to a hold. Wiping sweat from his forehead, Harry sheathed his wand and raised his head to take a look around.

The group that had opted for physical training looked, to Harry's immense satisfaction, far worse than the students' around him. Most of them were sweating and panting as Moody chased them across the area again and again, forcing them to duck, throw themselves to the ground and spring up again in a choreography only he knew. Hestia Jones was keeping up easily, but Mrs Weasley's red face and her laboured breathing showed all too well what she thought of these exercises.

The duelling group in the middle of the room was still busy. It seemed that they had entered into partnered duelling, with Professor McGonagall and Draco facing off the Weasley twins. It was nearly impossible to keep up against the two with their uncanny ability to predict the other's movements, but to Harry's mind, his Head of House and his friend were coping admirably.

At the other end of the room, Hermione and Snape were bending low over a large piece of parchment, critically examining some detail Harry couldn't make. What he did see, however, was the expression of honest respect and interest on the faces of those standing around them and listening to their explanation. The view filled his stomach with a feeling of warm happiness.

Perhaps it wouldn't be so bad after all, when the Order found out. They had resigned themselves to consider Snape and her as a team, and everything else really wasn't their business, anyway. His gaze darted over to the puffing and wheezing Mrs Weasley, and his confidence evaporated.

Better not to risk it.

Remus clapped his hands and Harry returned his attention to the group around him.

"You all did exceedingly well tonight," Their teacher announced, and Harry could see the others around him beam with pride, mirroring Harry's feelings exactly. "Well enough, in fact, to try your hands on advanced offensive spells during the next meeting. But for today it's enough," He stalled their disappointed protests with a raised hand. "You have thirty minutes before curfew to get to your dorms, and I rather suggest you won't risk overstepping the rules," He smiled. "There are, after all, a lot of teachers in this room."

As if they suddenly remembered all the people around them, the students nodded their agreement hastily and stepped out of the warded area. Harry followed his friends towards the tapestry, but obviously, his evening wasn't finished yet.

"Ron, Harry," Remus called after them. "Would you mind staying behind for a moment?"

Harry could see excitement in Ron's face, eagerness at the realization that he would be allowed to stay when the other students were being send away. The fact that Draco Malfoy now stepped down from the platform and joined them as if it wasn't worth talking about only slightly managed to dim his excitement.

Harry, however, felt uneasiness well up inside him. Whatever they were to stay behind for, it couldn't be very good. The feeling only intensified when, one after another, the Order members stopped training and left through various tapestries, until only he, Draco, Ron, Hermione, Remus, Moody, Snape and Dumbledore were left.

This definitely wouldn't be good. Harry could feel it in his very bones.

Gesturing for Ron and Harry to follow, Remus walked over to yet another part of the warded area. Harry could see nothing that hinted at the reason for them being here, nothing except three large boxes over by the windows.

He chanced a look at Hermione and saw her still deep in discussion with Snape, Dumbledore and Moody, who had joined the group around the strategy table, now that his trainees had all left.

Turning back to Remus, Harry found his DADA Professor clearly searching for words. Oh no, Harry thought, he definitely wouldn't like this.

"Why did you want us to stay behind, Remus?" He asked quietly, yet dreading the answer that would come.

Remus sighed, and brushed his hair back with an impatient gesture.

"According to the plan we are working on," He began his explanation. "Our forces will be divided into three groups. One will hide inside the caves below Tintagel, another one will hide under transfigured rocks or invisibility cloaks. The third group however, and by far the smallest," He paused, clearly not knowing how to phrase this.

"The third group will bear the whole brunt of the first attack and will have to deal with Voldemort as well. This group will consist of you, Harry and Ron, and of Hermione. You will have to survive until the Order can join the battle, and you will have to fight on your own."

He paused again, but when neither Harry nor Ron made a move to say something, he continued. "And to do that, you will need the Unforgivables, especially the Killing Curse. As far as we know, the _Avada Kedavra_ is the only curse that will harm Voldemort with certainty. And that is why you are here tonight. To cast the Killing Curse until you can use it confidently."

_I knew I would hate this_.

Harry swallowed and tried to straighten his body. He didn't like the idea, not at all, not when the third Unforgivable had always been connected in his mind with his mother's screams and the angry red scar that had turned him into a celebrity.

How could they expect him to cast it? How could he ever hate someone enough to want to kill him that way? To aim his wand at somebody and shoot that green, deadly light at him? And if he managed to cast the Curse, if he used it willingly, wouldn't he become one of them in a way, part of the people he had always hated?

_But if it is the only way to kill Voldemort?_ A voice in his mind asked. _If it is the only way to end this war?_

His eyes searched for Hermione and found her standing among the men around the strategy table, one of them, but clearly not listening to their conversation. Her whole being was fixed on Harry, and in his eyes he could read that she knew his doubts. That she knew and that she would accept his decision, whatever it would be.

_What have you done to end this war?_ He silently asked her, completely ignoring Ron's half hearted protests to his left. _What innocence have you sacrificed? How many have you hurt, how many have you killed to protect me?_

And then: _I am the only one who can finish off Voldemort. If I am to squeamish to do this, to sensitive to kill the man that destroyed most of my life, all their efforts, all their sacrifices will have been in vain._

Still not listening to Ron or Remus, he drew his wand, his eyes fixed on the little mouse that his DADA teacher had taken from one of the boxes. He felt the smooth, polished wood in his hand. Felt its reassuring coolness and lightly curled his fingers around the shaft.

In his mind, he could hear his mother's screams, could see Hermione clawing at Ron in her panic, could feel his own despair and fear, could taste the blood in his mouth when he had bitten his lip during the several doses of Cruciatus he had endured.

Slowly, he raised his wand, aiming for the mouse. All sound around him stopped.

But he didn't know how to do this. He hadn't managed a simple 'Crucio' back in his fifth year, how could he seriously think about performing the Killing Curse now?

"Hate is only part of what makes the spell work, Harry," A voice suddenly whispered near his ear. Draco. The serious Draco, who had taught him so many things about the wizarding world and himself. "The other part is the determined will to see it done. But both parts of the spell, and that is the trick with them, needn't concern the victim you have set yourself. Take your hate for Voldemort, and take your willingness to end this war. Combine them, and you should have no problems casting the spell."

Harry made no move to indicate that he had understood, but his eyes narrowed into slits until all his being was fixed on the frightened mouse, held in place by the wards.

He. Would. End. This. War.

"Avada Kedavra," He heard a voice whisper, no, hiss, and before he had realized that this cold, icy cold hiss had been his voice, a green light hit the mouse.

It was dead immediately.

Complete silence had fallen on the room as Harry stood there, his wand still pointing at the dead mouse, his face a mask of coldness and determination. After a moment of in which time itself seemed to be frozen, Remus broke the spell by stepping towards the tiny corpse and vanishing it with his wand.

"That was excellent for the first time, Harry," He said, his voice a bit hoarse and unsure and the smile on his face not quite reaching his eyes. "Why don't you practice a bit more while I assist Ron. Draco, could you help Harry?"

Draco nodded. "I never thought you had it in you, Gryffindor," He whispered into Harry's ear when Remus and Ron had passed them.

"Neither did I," Harry whispered back. He killed the second mouse that Draco retrieved from the box. The third. The fourth and fifth.

After eight mice, he felt both nauseated and dirty all over, but he was also sure that he would manage to cast the spell correctly in any situation.

He had done it.

Ron, however, was an altogether different matter.

"You really have to want this, Ron," Remus explained patiently for at least the tenth time. "Not the words make the Curse work, but the will behind them. If you do not feel enough hate and determination to kill, you will never be able to do it."

"But how can I hate a mouse enough to want to kill it?" Ron asked unhappily. "I mean, it is quite cute, isn't it?"

"You don't have to specifically hate the one that stands before you, although with Voldemort as your only target, that shouldn't be a problem," Remus explained patiently. "But you have to channel these feelings into the Curse, wherever they originate from."

Once more, Ron raised his arm and trained his wand on the mouse. His arm trembled with the tension in his body and his face was red with concentration.

"Avada Kedavra," He shouted, but nothing happened.

"Avada Kedavra!"

Harry gestured to Draco that he didn't want another mouse from the box, and stepped over to where Ron was shouting and pointing in vain.

"Avada Kedavra!"

"Avada Kedavra!"

The mouse squeaked miserably, and Ron let his wand sink. He looked as if he was quite willing to agree with the mouse.

"Maybe I'm stupid or too weak or something, but I simply do not hate anybody enough to want to kill him!" He finally said, his voice taking on a whiny tone of complaint. "Not even Voldemort! I mean, I was always taught by my parents that hate is a bad thing, and that nothing could ever justify killing someone! It's not that easy to go against your grain like that!"

"You have to," Harry quietly said. "If you want to help us."

"I do want to help! But how can I change what I am? How can I start hating like that?"

"Very strange, Weasley," Draco drawled from the sight. Harry recognized his tone as the typical Slytherin sneer, and realized that his friend was trying to provoke Ron. There was nothing that could anger a Weasley as much as a dose of Slytherin arrogance. Harry just hoped that Ron wouldn't decide that a snake as target was easier to kill than the cute little mouse.

"From the way you are staring at me and everyone who doesn't share your blunt approach to reality, I would have thought that hate is your most natural emotion. But it probably only comes to you when it's completely useless?"

Sucking in his breath, Harry waited for the explosion to come. From the corner of his eyes, he saw both Snape and Hermione stepping into the warded area and felt relieved. If Ron decided to attack Draco, he would be disarmed quicker than he could finish a curse.

But for once in his life, Ron Weasley did the completely unexpected. Instead of turning on Draco, Ron lowered his wand and looked the Slytherin calmly in the face.

"I know what you're trying to do, Malfoy," He said quietly. "But sorry to disappoint you. What I feel for you or the other gits in your house isn't hate. It's anger and, lately, jealousy," He blushed violently, but didn't stop talking. "But it is not hate. I honestly don't know how if can feel that, at least not strong enough to make this damned curse work."

"You really want to learn hate?" Hermione asked quietly from where she had positioned herself. It was the first time she had spoken to him since the incident with her pensieve, and he flinched slightly, but then turned around to her and nodded slowly.

"I don't want to let you down. Harry needs me by his side, and if I can help to end this battle, I'm willing to do anything it takes."

Hermione sighed and slowly walked over to them. Harry could see a gleam in Snape's eyes, telling him that the Spymaster knew exactly what she was planning and wasn't that happy about it.

"I could help you, Ron," She told him. "But you should be absolutely sure that you want this. It would cost you a piece of your innocence."

Ron opened his mouth to argue that he hadn't been innocent for a long time, thank you very much, but something in Hermione's eyes must have told him how serious she was, and so he closed his mouth again and thought long and hard instead.

"Yes," He finally agreed. "I can't let you all wait for me, and going around hoping to be mistreated or something isn't a great alternative, either."

"Hermione," Snape began, but she just shook her head and sent him a glance that silenced him immediately.

"Well then," She told Ron. "If you're sure…"

He nodded, and she stepped even closer to him, took his face in her hands and tilted it downwards, so that she could meet his eyes.

"Relax," She whispered. "This will hurt a lot."

And then, obvious to everyone who had ever seen a Legilimens at work, she dove into his mind.

Less than a minute into their contact, Ron's face turned grey, and his eyes widened to an impossible size. His body started twitching.

Hermione held the contact for more than ten minutes and Ron seemed on the verge of collapse the entire time. Harry wondered why this could take so terribly long, but then he realized that Hermione was doing the opposite to what she was usually doing with Snape. Instead of compressing the memories into a stream of information as small and condensed as she could, she was slowing them down, making it easier for Ron to cope with them.

But he didn't seem to cope very well nevertheless.

Then, Hermione let go of him.

For a moment, Ron's body swayed while he returned to reality, his face turning very green and his ears an obscene red.

Harry stepped to his side and reached out to steady him, but Ron threw himself away from him and to the ground. The sound of his violent retching filled the room, in which all conversation had finally stopped.

With an expression too calm to be natural, Hermione conjured a wet cloth and placed it on Ron's neck.

"Try to breathe deeply and steadily," She told him and vanished his vomit with a flick of her wand. "The feeling will subside in a moment."

It didn't look like it, though. A shivering took hold of Ron's frame, until his whole body, still crouching on the floor, shook violently. Still he retched, and it took Harry a moment to interpret the shaking of Ron's shoulders correctly. His mate was crying, and the retching turned into dry, heaving sobs.

"Gods, Hermione, didn't you overdo it a bit?" Draco asked, stepping closer with a worried expression. "How many weeks did you pour into him?"

Hermione just smiled sadly and repositioned the cloth on Ron's neck.

"I only gave him parts of my initiation," She told Draco, and Harry looked up to her in disbelief.

"The memory of one evening did that to him?" He asked, pointing at Ron's trembling frame.

Hermione nodded. "It was a rather rough night," She admitted. "But as long as it shows him what he needs…"

Finally, Ron's convulsive twitching and the terrible sounds ceased.

When he looked up to her, Harry saw a new expression in his eyes.

"I'm sorry, Hermione," The redhead whispered hoarsely. "I never knew… I wouldn't have… Gods, I'm sorry."

Harry reached out to him, but Hermione stopped him with a harsh "Don't touch him!", just as Ron flinched away from Harry's hand violently.

"It will take some time for him to bear hands on his body again," Hermione said calmly. Then she looked at Ron with eyes friendlier than she had for weeks.

"Do you want to take a shower, or rest a bit?"

Ron hesitated, then shook his head. "Let's try the Curse again," he whispered. "It should be easy now."

Hermione nodded. "I thought so."

"Ron," Harry said, still not completely understanding what had happened to his friend. "Don't you think it would be better to rest?"

"No," Ron answered, still in that horribly dead voice. "The Curse."

He killed the mouse with his first attempt, his green light stronger and much more intense than Harry's. But though he now seemed to master the Curse quite easily, he didn't stop. For half an hour he killed mice and spiders, silently, without once turning his eyes away from the practice area, until he shivered again, this time with exhaustion.

Finally, Hermione stepped up to him again.

"It is enough," She told him. "You can do it. Now rest, and clean yourself, and eat something."

Slowly, he turned his head around and looked at her in disbelief. It seemed to Harry that he quietly asked her how he could ever do these normal, everyday things again, after what he had seen.

"Life goes on, Ron," Hermione told him softly. Slowly, she raised her hand and placed it on his shoulder. He flinched, but she didn't pull away, and after a second or two, his muscles relaxed.

"Everything will be better in a day or two."

"That's hard to believe," He answered hoarsely. "I don't think I can ever forget…"

"You will never forget," She interrupted him. "But you will learn to live with it, like I did."

Suddenly, she smiled sadly. "What you saw took place a year ago, Ron. Much worse things have happened to me since then, and I'm still standing."

For a moment, Ron looked as if he wanted to argue his point. But then he seemed to realize who he was talking with, and again, Harry could see traces of a strange emotion in his eyes, a mixture of awe, fear and admiration, before he nodded and lowered his head.

"I'll get him to our dorms," Harry offered, and was rewarded with a smile from Hermione.

"Take good care of him," She said quietly. "He will have a hard time of it."

For the rest of the week, Harry and the other boys in the seventh year dorm were woken by Ron's screams as one nightmare after the other took hold of him. It was worse than Harry's fifth year, worse than what Ron had told him about Ginny after her possession by Voldemort, and after the third night, Harry told Ron to get some Dreamless Sleep potion from the infirmary.

"Hermione brought me some, on the first evening after she…" Ron answered, averting his eyes.

"Then why didn't you take it?" Harry said in surprise, but his friend didn't answer.

"Was it that bad?" Harry asked after a moment, cursing himself for the stupid question immediately.

Ron looked up to that, and smiled bitterly. Harry had never seen such a cynical, dead expression on his friend's face. He looked like a different person.

"Worse," He answered hoarsely. "And I don't want to talk about it."

"No, I can understand that," Harry agreed quietly. "Just… if you want to talk to someone…"

He watched as Ron's smile gained a bit more life. "Sure," He said. "But I don't think I ever will."

Harry waited, but Ron remained quiet, his face tilted to the side as if he was listening to silent whispering.

After another night of screams, Harry taught him the silencing spell he himself had used throughout fifth and parts of the sixth year.

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**A/N:** The Title of this and the 47th chapter alludes to the three witches in Shakespeare's "Macbeth" (forgot to mention that before, sorry).

Robin and Little John refer, of course, to Robin Hood and his merry band of thieves, while Freya is a Germanic goddess. The system of codes the spies use will be explained in some later chapter.

I'm afraid that the next update will probably take longer than a week, but it will give you what you have asked for quite some time: The Order will finally be informed about Hermione's and Severus' relationship. And they won't like it one bit.

Now click on the little button on the left side and motivate me to work faster!


	50. East of Kansas

**A/N**: Sorry about the long wait, people, but let me tell you in defence that I used the time to also write a huge part of the next chapter, so that you won't have to wait so long (you will know why this is important when you have reached the end of this chapter). Thus, the next update should take about a week, perhaps less time. And now, read and enjoy! 

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**East of Kansas**

"Hermione?" Severus' voice echoed through their chambers.

"Up here," She called and could hear him ascend the stairs a moment later. She sighed, closing her eyes for a moment and letting her head rest against the edge of the tub.

Severus had been in a strange mood these last days, ever since his spy had been killed and she had 'cured' Ron shortly after.

She wasn't sure which of the two events had caused his irritated, rather cold behaviour. Although she had told him exactly how little of her memories Ron had seen – she hadn't been stupid enough to show him the parts of the initiation involving her directly, just some random muggle torturing and a short session of Cruciatus – Severus still hadn't been happy with her decision.

Whether it was the memory of how he had invaded her mind or simple jealousy that she had shared something as intimate as a mental contact with the red head, he had kept mentioning it over the last days until she had asked him angrily whether he didn't trust her judgment any longer.

That had silenced him, but it hadn't changed the strange tension that underlay his every movement these days.

She opened her eyes again when she heard him step through the open door into her bathroom.

"Good afternoon, love," She greeted him. "How was your day?"

He smiled, but it was a strained smile, and she couldn't help noticing that, while sitting down on the edge of her tub, he chose a place near her head so that she couldn't see face.

"Awfully boring," He drawled. "I had a meeting with a few aurors, and then I made a visit at Walhalla."

"How's Freya?" She asked, closing her eyes again when she felt his fingers softly touching her forehead, kneading the tension from her scalp.

"Her usual, efficient self," Severus answered, a smile hidden in his words, and Hermione smiled in answering. She had met Freya once, both in disguise of course, to exchange emergency codes that would enable them to recognize each other should the need ever come. She had liked the other woman immediately.

"What did you do today?"

Hermione chuckled. "Are you really interested in my Charms and Arithmancy lessons?" She asked back. "Or should I recount the tedious details of my meeting with Harry and Draco? We have worked out a schedule for Harry's worsening mood, including a tantrum in front of the Headmaster's office next Tuesday. But most entertaining were Draco's plans to worm himself into our new Potions teacher's heart. The way he goes about it, I would be surprised if she not only took him as her apprentice but also fell in love with him and proposed."

"That would make some people wonder whether the position wasn't as cursed as the DADA one," Snape commented, a hint of amusement lacing his voice with warmth. "Take the job and fall in love with a student. Not a very enticing perspective."

Instead of an answer, Hermione reached out and slapped him playfully on the arm.

"I should leave my tub then, and retire into the safety of my clothes, if you find the thought of me so little enticing," She pouted.

But he didn't fall into their routine of playful bickering. Instead, he stood and left the bathroom, as if expecting her to follow shortly.

She frowned. Something definitely wasn't right, and she had a feeling that the storm brewing over their heads for the last few days would finally break loose this afternoon.

She washed, lathered and rinsed her hair with swift and precise movements, then stood up, foam and water running down her body like small rivers in which peaks of ice and snow danced.

A movement of her hand dried body and hair, but still she chose a towel and wrapped it around her body, enjoying the soft warmth and its fresh smell.

Severus was indeed waiting for her in what they had come to call her room, although she had spent little time there over the last weeks. Her clothes, books and school materials – at least those she hadn't spread downstairs in the library during her last study session – were in this room, meticulously organized on the shelves, the desk and her large cupboard. But most of her waking time found her downstairs, and her nights were spent in Severus's room, sleeping by his side, his arms wrapped around her.

She couldn't say that she missed living on her own.

At the moment, however, Severus was sitting in her arm chair by the fire side, not looking at all as if he would wrap his arms around her in the near future. There was a hard set around his mouth that made him look colder, less approachable than she had become used to.

She smiled as she walked by, heading towards her large wardrobe. Both had learned to accept each other's moods long ago, and if he couldn't stand tenderness tonight, she would not make him feel uncomfortable.

"Draco and Harry asked me why I never duelled, by the way," She told him as she opened the door to her wardrobe and examined her clothes critically. Any stranger who peeped a view of them would probably believe they belonged to at least three different women, and he wouldn't be so wrong about it.

The school robes and uniforms, hanging neatly besides jeans, sweaters and blouses in light blue, pink and white, projected the image of a school girl with muggle background, not really interested in clothes or able to afford anything fancy, but who made an effort nonetheless.

They definitely didn't fit with the skirts, trousers and tops in the middle, held in warm, earthen tones of brown, red or gold. They looked mature, elegant but down to business, belonging to a woman who knew what she wanted. Those were the clothes she only wore in the privacy of their chambers, or sometimes during the Inner Circle meetings of the Order.

"And what did you answer?"

She frowned and walked to the right side of the wardrobe, where her 'business' clothes were waiting for inspection. The fact that it took him so long to ask either meant that he hadn't listened to her or wasn't particularly interested in conversation.

"I smiled and told them that you were very jealous in that regard."

She bent down and opened her right underwear drawer, choosing a dark red silk slip and bra. Still waiting for a reaction to her words, she sent the towel back to the bathroom with a flick of her wrist and started to dress.

"Have you been called?" He asked neutrally. She could feel his eyes resting on the bra in her hand, then her position close to the seductive, low cut dresses, the short skirts and see-through tops.

"Not yet. But it is only a matter of hours." She half turned her head and looked at him, but she didn't smile. It was yet one more of the things that made her relationship with Severus so strange – he would compliment her and flirt like any other man, but never, never when she wore seductive, revealing underwear as she did now.

Lace and frills and garters meant work. Tight mini skirts and revealing blouses she wore as a mask, as a costume to stress her role. They belonged to the Death Eaters' world. Cotton slips and sensible bras, tops and trousers, that was the true Hermione, the Hermione he would touch.

"Skirt or dress?" She asked, just as neutrally as he.

"Skirt, along with the red blouse," He answered and she nodded in agreement. Just what she would have chosen herself.

She had felt nervous, terribly insecure when she had dressed like this in his presence for the first time, afraid that he would approach her and that she would have to withdraw from him. But he had understood that it was nothing but a uniform, not meant to attract him but to follow the dress code the Death Eaters expected from a woman.

And he had kept his distance. Given her the neutral atmosphere she needed. She was still deeply thankful for that.

"Lucius mentioned that there would be a meeting tonight," She continued as she stepped into the skirt and slid it up her legs and hips. "And as I am warned, they will not tolerate the school girl."

"I gather you won't be present at the customary meeting of idiots, then?"

Hermione frowned as she buttoned her blouse. "Meeting of idiots" was one of the many endearing descriptions Severus had used for the Inner Circle's meetings over the last months, but today his voice lacked the playfulness which usually accompanied these insults. He sounded harsh, bitter, and aggressive, and she wondered what had caused this dark mood.

"I don't think so," She answered. "Not unless the call comes very late, that is."

"Good for you," He said in the same, harsh tone and sat down on her bed. "Then at least one of us won't waste time tonight."

Her frown deepened, and she turned around to him fully. "Those meetings aren't a waste of time, Severus, you know that better than anybody else," She reproached him softly. "What is the matter with you?"

He scowled, his face twisting into an ugly grimace. "Perhaps I'm simply tired of having to deal with fools day after day after day. Perhaps I'm sick of people who land themselves in trouble because they continuously ignore my advice. Perhaps…"

She rolled her eyes. Not that again. Next, he would deliver his speech about unnecessary Legilimency, or about her completely illogical wish to keep Potter informed, or about Tonks ability to ignore everything that wasn't dangling directly in front of her nose. Followed by a good heap of scathing remarks about spies like Little John who simply couldn't stick to their assignment, getting themselves killed as a consequence, or about Inner Circle members who possessed so little self control that it hurt to watch them.

Honestly, she had heard enough of this over the last days.

"Severus Snape," She said imperiously. "You can either speak with me as if I possessed a brain and tell me what the problem is, or you can go around behaving like my former Potions Master, a sneering, belittling, self righteous bastard if ever I saw one. But if you choose the latter, please don't do it in my room. Go and torture some Order members, then!"

For a moment, she actually thought he would leave. He was already on his feet and moving away from her bed, his face still set in the angry lines she knew so well, when suddenly his shoulders slumped and he stopped, having lost all energy to move.

"I wonder why you waste your time with me at all," He said, slowly, sullenly, and though few would have understood his meaning, she recognized the words for what they were, a silent plea, and walked over to him, softly grasping his hand and leading him over to the bed.

"Madness, probably," She answered lightly, but didn't let go of his hand. "Or perhaps I love moody old men with a sense of humour so sharp you could cut glass with it. Is this about Little John, Severus?"

He was silent for a long time, only the setting of his brows telling her that he was thinking hard, trying to answer her question as correctly as possible. It was a difficult question, obviously, judging from the time it took him to find a satisfying answer.

"Not exclusively," He finally said, still frowning. "Little John just gave a face to something that has been clamouring for attention some time now. I'm not sure what it is. Not entirely."

Quite suddenly, she felt torn between the overwhelming need to kiss those lines of worry away and to give him a good tongue lashing about the indulgence of self pity, but neither was what he needed right now.

"Something having to do with yourself or with the people around you?" She asked instead.

He was silent for a long time, long enough in fact to make her wonder if he wouldn't ever answer, but at least he allowed her to settle on the bed and pull him down beside her.

"Both," He hesitated. "Perhaps none. It's nothing I can pinpoint, rather a general irritation."

"That blooms to full life every time someone you feel responsible for does something risky or stupid," She added, not caring to explain that her actions towards Ron had been nothing of the sort. He knew that himself.

"No wonder it has turned into a permanent state," He agreed grumblingly. "Barely a day goes by without someone around me making a fool of himself."

"A fact that should make it clear enough to you how useless your behaviour is," Hermione said gently and laid a hand on his back. Noting how tense he was, she twisted slightly around until her other hand could easily reach his shoulders and started kneading them slowly. "People will act the way they want to no matter what you think about it. They will make decisions regardless of your agreement, and you can do nothing to change it."

"I wonder why they need a Spymaster then," He practically growled. "What's the use of developing procedures and protocols, portkeys and wards if people simply decide to follow someone into Knockturn Alley and get their heads blown off?"

"So this is about Little John."

"Not more than about Baldur stumbling into a little Death Eater meeting and nearly having his skull cracked, or Draco nagging on about how much he wants to spy on his father, or about that ridiculous bunch of Gryffindors training with us in the honest belief they could survive a battle for longer than a second…" He stopped abruptly, perhaps having realized how loud and angry his voice had become.

She waited silently for him to continue, but he just shrugged, as if it wasn't worth talking about. She might have believed his body language, acting out an unfelt feeling as perfectly as usual, but she knew him too well.

"Not so long ago, someone told me that this was a war and that sacrifices were unavoidable, no matter how hard we fought," She said quietly.

"There's a difference between deciding that the risk is worth the outcome in regard to your own life and to that of others," He answered, his voice still harsh. "Risking my exposure was never a problem for me. But sacrificing others for the greater good – Albus may be able to accomplish it with a grandfatherly smile and a sad little twinkle, but it has never been my line of business."

Hermione sighed. If he criticized Albus that openly, he really had to feel awful. And considering how often they had gone through variations of this conversation over the last days, her listening compassionately didn't help him much. Perhaps it was time for a change of tactic.

She flashed him a curious little half smile which he didn't even notice, too engrossed in his worries. Inwardly, she nodded. It was definitely time to snap him out of it.

"It's just astonishing how similar you are to Harry, Severus," She drawled, knowing that if there was anything in this world to distract him from his thoughts, it would be such a comment.

And, of course, she was right.

His head rose in speechless indignation, and it took several attempts for him to form his angry protest.

"I am not," He exclaimed, and she couldn't help but chuckle. "How in the world a mentally capable person like you might come to such an erroneous conclusion is beyond me, but I would consider it quite gratifying if you stopped insulting me this minute!"

Her chuckle turned into an outright laugh.

"Well, you are certainly more eloquent than he is," She commented.

"Reciting a list of abilities of which I possess 'more' than Potter would take several hours, I assure you!"

"But not in regard to your completely irrational feeling of responsibility."

"Potter is anything but responsible."

"I didn't talk about his actions. Your similarity lies in the realm of feeling, Severus. Like you, he couldn't help but feel responsible for every single one around him who got hurt, killed or suffered in any other way from the Dark Lord. As if it was him who decided other's lives. As if we went to the Department of Mystery because he ordered us to."

"Didn't he?" He snarled sarcastically still refusing to acknowledge he undertone of their topic and its meaning for him.

"No. He wanted to go alone," She answered impatiently. "But that's beside the point! Even if we had followed him because he wanted us to, it still would have been our decision! Just as it is my decision to spy, Ron's and Harry's decision to fight the Dark Lord and as it was Little John's decision to follow a suspect into Knockturn alley.

"People don't give up their brain just because they follow somebody else's orders. And you aren't the Dark Lord, who forces his Death Eaters into a fight. Everyone connected to the Order has a choice, Severus. And although Harry often thought differently over the last years, people aren't fighting against Voldemort and dying because of the Boy Who Lived. They have their very own reasons. There was only one thing I could do to make Harry see sense, usually."

"What did you do?" Severus asked, meeting her eyes questioningly, but still pretending that this talk hadn't the slightest relevance for him.

She grinned. "I told him that, if it was anybody's fault, it most certainly was mine. After all it was me who found out about the basilisk in second year, used the Time Turner in third and helped him so that he would cross the labyrinth fast enough in fourth. Not to talk about the fact that it was my idea to found the DA, or that I was the one who used Kreacher as bait. Oh, and now that I think about it, didn't I cause Albus to offer you the job as Spymaster? Looks as if it's my fault all over again!"

Slowly, Severus smiled, and her grin widened in answer.

"And what would Mr Potter reply to that?" He asked.

"That I was an awful sophist and he simply couldn't talk logically with me," She replied happily. "But at least he would laugh."

And Severus chuckled in answer, thus unwillingly proving his similarity to Harry Potter once and for all.

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_I can't believe that he actually likes all this grovelling,_ Hermione thought as she got down on her knees and crawled towards Voldemort. The call had in fact come later than she had anticipated, and now that her time for a solitary meeting with the Dark Lord and his right hand man had come, it was nearly midnight. _I'd be bored stiff!_

As she approached him and reverently kissed the hand that was stretched out to her, she quickly fixed her mind into the orthodox pattern that was expected of a Death Eater.

"My Lord," She whispered, awe and fear battling in her voice.

Only when he withdrew his hand, not without patting her head generously, did she half turn around and greet Lucius Malfoy with another bow to the ground.

"Master Malfoy," She said deferentially.

"What is that blood on your face, pet?" The Dark Lord suddenly asked. "Are you hurt?"

"It is nothing my Lord," She replied hastily, her hand sneaking up to the split lip as if to hide it.

"Who did this?" Voldemort hissed, and she trembled violently under his anger. She knew that it wasn't directed at her at the moment, but it was never wrong to show fear in his presence. But she remained silent.

"Have you met my other servants on the way down here?" She nodded slightly and heard another hiss of anger.

The Dark Lord didn't like it when the Inner Circle tortured her without his command – he had made that clear enough. Of course, the split lip wasn't from the Death Eaters, they had learned fast enough to hurt her only where it wouldn't show. But she _had_ met them on her way down, and if her facial injuries resulted from her running into a wall, well, she had only answered his question and wouldn't stand to correct her master.

Inwardly, she smiled.

"This matter will be taken care of," The Dark Lord now announced, and she could Lucius to her left nod grimly. He didn't like it either when others hurt her – he preferred to do that himself.

_A strange set of guardian angels I got myself there_, She thought.

"Your care overwhelms me, my Lord," She whispered and saw his face twist into something that could have been called a smile on another man's face.

"What news from the castle, pet?" The slithering voice now asked and, knowing that the formal part of her introduction was over, Hermione raised her upper body completely, though she still remained on her knees in front of his throne. Now, they would talk business.

"Potter is becoming angrier every day, my Lord," She began, twisting her lips into a sly, mocking smile. "Dumbledore has forbidden him to leave the castle under any circumstances, and I do not leave out a chance to remind him how small his chances are against you, my Lord. Thus, he spends his time with fear of you and fury directed against the Headmaster."

"And that is as it should be, isn't it, Lucius," The Dark Lord asked, satisfaction oozing from his words like acid slime.

"Most certainly, my Lord," Lucius agreed quietly, his eyes resting on her.

"I have also worked towards a reconciliation with the Weasley idiot," Hermione continued, her words suddenly cold with disgust as she projected her anger towards Ron to the forefront of her mind. She knew that Voldemort was reading her, would be sifting through every memory of the last days while she spoke. It wasn't a sign of his mistrust any longer – he did it to any of his servants, with the nonchalant cruelty of a man crushing an insect. Respect for other wizards was something Voldemort had never heard of.

"Ronald still is the most reckless of the Gryffindor filth, and as soon has he has regained Potter's trust, Potter will spend even less time with preparing himself for the useless attempt to fight you, my Lord."

"Good, good, my little Hermione. What about the traitor?"

"As far as I could find out, my Lord, he still lives in the castle, though he hasn't be seen by any student – at least not from Gryffindor, Racenclaw or Hufflepuff."

She knew better than to ask whether Slytherins had reported to him about Severus' whereabouts – any question from her side would cause swift and hard punishment, and she wasn't too keen on that.

"But Potter told me that he met Snape in Dumbledore's office one afternoon, when he went there to complain about his house arrest," She sneered, showing all too clearly what she thought of Harry's foolishness. "Potter's hate for the traitor has doubled, and every day I give new fuel to it. While I dare not approach him directly any more – the poisoning nearly got me caught, as you know, my Lord – Potter's distrust has spread to most of the Weasley family by now, and while we know what fools these dirty muggle lovers are, they are highly respected among the Order members. Very soon, a conflict between Potter's followers and him will occur, leaving Snape isolated."

"Yet another sign of Dumbledore's foolishness," Lucius drawled, his cold, handsome face impassive except for a little sneer, mirroring hers. "To even listen to these wretched beggars."

"Only fools would follow him," She agreed, her eyes darting towards Voldemort, as if she feared to anger the Dark Lord with her outspokenness. "Everyone who has eyes must see the glory of your reign, my Lord."

"You talk about the Order, pet," The Dark Lord said, ignoring her comment in favour for information. He was no fool, her master, although his pride blinded him for many things.

"Have you finally obtained your membership among them?"

Before she had even thought about an adequate reaction, her body had already cowered down, her forehead pressed on the cold stone of the throne room's floor, a silent admittance of her failure. It had been a pure reflex, and for a moment, worry coursed through her at the thought that less than a year as Death Eater had turned her into such a cowardly, fearful thing.

Then, she thanked her body for his prompt reaction. The Dark Lord noticed such things. A reflex of fear and respect would save her more pain than any well phrased sentence ever could.

"No, my Lord," She whispered. With her face still close to the stone, she could nearly taste the slick atmosphere of this underground chamber, its damp, slightly stale air and the cold, fishy wetness of the black marble beneath her.

"I tried, my Lord. I talk to Potter again and again. He's demanded our inclusion from Dumbledore three times now, and is planning to visit him again next week. But the sly bastard is adamant."

She had never taken to calling the Headmaster a fool, or a senile idiot, like so many Death Eaters did. She knew better than that, and so did Voldemort. Underestimating your enemy could be the last you did, a lesson Lucius himself had taught her, and she only spoke of Dumbledore, Snape and most other Order members with hateful respect.

"It seems that he will not let us contribute until we have graduated. I told Potter that this was yet another attempt of Dumbledore to manipulate him, and the fool believed me, but there is no way for me to enter the Order without creating suspicion. Moody is still paranoid as hell."

She stopped herself before she could start babbling, something that would show a lack of discipline. The Dark Lord hated such deficits, and usually made abundantly clear what he thought of them. But even discipline wouldn't save her now from the punishment that would follow her failure.

"I am disappointed, mudblood," Voldemort announced lazily, and Hermione readied herself for an attack of pain. To her surprise, none came. "But perhaps this is just because I have come to expect such high things of you." He continued, and she couldn't believe her luck.

He was not punishing her? If she had ever needed proof of how much she had risen since the night of her initiation, this was it. He was letting her finish her report unharmed. He was allowing her failure without punishment.

"Your generosity knows no bound, my Lord," She breathed, careful to show relief and surprise openly. He offered her his hand and she grasped it lovingly kissing its palm.

"Wait till you see the treat I prepared for my loyal servants tonight, girl," He answered, trading a knowing look with Lucius Malfoy. "I believe this will be a night to be remembered."

She looked up to him, her eyes huge and adoring, her lips partway open as if in admiration, and saw that he was smiling, a dark, excited smile that suddenly made her feel sick.

"I can't wait, my Lord," She whispered, and his smile broadened.

"You won't have to, pet," He purred and nodded to Lucius, who stepped away from the throne with a bow and quickly left the chamber, his steps echoing in the darkness around them.

"Rise, Hermione," The Dark Lord commanded, just as the doors opened again and Inner Circle members poured into the room. She stood up slowly, her mouth still pressed to his palm, and looked up to him, awaiting further instructions.

She was the only one who saw the smile suddenly vanish from his face, replaced by something colder and even darker.

"And remember, mudblood," He hissed. "I was very forgiving today, but if your work doesn't satisfy me any longer, you might be the next entertainment I will prepare for my soldiers. Now, turn around and look what I brought you."

She nodded humbly, let go of is hand as if she was giving up something too precious to bear, and turned around.

She could barely suppress a scream as she saw what Lucius Malfoy was levitating into the room.

_Dear gods above, no, don't make me do this_, She prayed, but when she stepped into the circle of Death Eaters, her mask fastened on a face just as cold and expressionless, she did not hesitate. Not even when it was her turn to draw her wand.

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Severus was working in the main room of the Headquarters, altering the maps and tactical diagrams to put them up to date with their newest information, when the tapestry connecting his private chambers to the Headquarters awoke to a golden shimmer.

He quickly finished the spells, then walked over to the magical door just as Hermione made the transition. He was glad she had returned. She had left for yet another meeting of the Death Eaters yesterday night, nearly twenty hours ago.

Except for the usual short Inner Circle meeting, they had spent the last evening together, alone, and when the call came, he had seen her worry expressed in every line of her body as she collected her robes and mask and left his chambers.

Voldemort was growing more and more obsessive with his revels, and the numbers of his victims, both muggle and muggleborn, grew faster than ever before. It was true that her punishments were fewer and less harsh than when her career as a Death Eater had begun, but the things she was forced to do and see still drove her to the edge time and again.

His worried eyes swept over her while she straightened her robes. She seemed unharmed, no injuries visible, but something was not right with her, he felt it in his bones.

He tried to greet her in the silent language of her minds, but encountered only a grey wall of shimmering steel. Her mind was still closed to him, which meant that something troubled her too much to lower her shields.

"You didn't inform me that you had returned," He said quietly, bridging the distance between them with two long steps. It was not an accusation but the simple, quiet stating of a fact.

"No," She agreed. "There were no important news, and I didn't require help, so I just took a shower and rested a bit."

He didn't have to tell her that he had been worried sick, or that it would have relieved him to know of her return. She knew all that. If she hadn't informed him, she'd probably had a good reason.

"Bad?" He asked instead and only received a slight tremble of her shoulders as an answer. He could see that she hadn't eaten, or slept. She looked tired and pale, as if something was missing from her usual appearance. Her mind seemed to be turned inward, to be eating itself from the inside, and Severus could almost smell her guilt.

Slowly, he raised his hands and cupped her face tenderly, tilting it upwards until she met his eyes.

"Tell me," He said softly. It wasn't a command, and she could walk away from him every moment, but instead of refusing the contact, she leaned into his hands. Her skin was cold to the touch.

"Her name was Dorothy," Hermione began after a moment, her voice hoarse and full of unshed tears. "A small muggle girl, barely five years old, captured along with her father. She was afraid, of course, who wouldn't be when surrounded by dark cloaked, faceless figures, but she had a trust in her eyes, a deep belief that everything would turn out right. She didn't let go of her father's hand."

She took a deep breath, and, as if of its own accord, her right hand reached out to him, her open palm resting on his chest, where she could feel his heartbeat. As if to assure herself that he was still alive.

"Then they killed him in front of her eyes. You know what they do to the bodies," her voice was matter of fact and her eyes dry, but he could hear the deep hurt inside her, could feel it pulsing through her veins. "She never cried. She never screamed. She just kept hold of her father's hand, until there was no hand left to keep hold of.

Her breathing had turned heavy, a dry sobbing that cut though him like a whip. "And still she had that unbelievable trust in her eyes. That everything would turn out all right in the end. Somehow. Such beautiful eyes. Brown like chocolate, and full of life."

She stopped. He knew what was coming as surely as if she had told him, but all he did was detach one hand from her face and, circling her shoulders, draw her closer, to warm and to giv e comfort.

"Lucius ripped them out. He ripped her eyes out. She was screaming, then, and frightened, all alone in the dark and everywhere around her pain she couldn't see coming. She was such a beautiful little child."

Hermione shivered convulsively. The trembling increased until he drew her even closer, both arms wrapped around her, pressing her body against his so that she could feel his life, the reality around her, to force her to return to him from the nightmare she was caught in.

"What did you do?" He asked quietly, knowing it all the same.

"I killed her," The answer came in a whisper to the merciful darkness of his robes, a quiet confession only he could hear. "When it was my time, I screamed at her and slapped her face. Hard. Hard enough to break her neck. She died with the feeling of my hands violating her."

He lowered his head and found her eyes staring at him, as if awaiting a judgment. Slowly, he bent down a bit and kissed her on the forehead, a slow, soothing kiss, telling her what was needed.

"You did the right thing," He told her. "I would have done the same."

"Her name was Dorothy," Hermione whispered into his robes. "She was not even Jane's size, and I broke her neck. I killed her, Severus!"

"She deserved a quick death. It was the only thing you could give to her. Peace. And end to her suffering."

"I know," She answered. "But it doesn't make the pain go away."

"No," He agreed.

They were silent for a long time, her body still pressed against his, drinking warmth and life from him, while his hands rubbed soothing circles on her back.

"Thank you," She finally said, and when he met her eyes, he felt the steel wall separating them slip away.

_Why is it you always know what I need, Severus,_ She asked silently, and he sent her a warm smile that wrapped around her heart and soul and made her shiver again, this time with pleasure.

_Because I am a part of you, Hermione_, He answered as silently and once more, reverently, bent down to kiss the silky skin of her forehead.

That was when both heard a gasp behind them, and, without a moment's thought, whirled around, wands and knives in hand, wide enough apart from each other that they could move freely but one could still shield the other, only to meet the shocked faces of Remus, Tonks, Arthur and Molly.

_Shit_. Severus couldn't have said whether the thought originated from him or from Hermione.

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**A/N: **The chapter title refers both to the novel „East of Eden" by John Steinbeck (brilliant read, by the way), and the „Wizard of Oz" by Frank Baum, in which the little girl Dorothy is transported to a world of magic.

Now, to set the agenda for the next week: You review, I write. Hope you liked it!


	51. Love Looks on Tempests

A/N: Thank you all for your reviews! I hope you'll like this chapter and the direction it is taking the story! You will again find a preview for the next chapter and a lot of answers to your questions in my forum, a few days from now! 

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**Love Looks on Tempests**

Harry was looking forward to this evening. With a bit of luck, they would further develop their idea about the prophecy and finally make a decision. Draco and he had spent the afternoon in Headquarters, devising a possible text that would contain the first few sentences and then change to their liking.

But when Draco and he left the Great Hall after dinner, sending hateful glances and mocking comments at each other until they were sure to be alone, when they made the transition to the Order's meeting room, they didn't step into the first stages of an Inner Circle meeting.

It looked much more like Bedlam to Harry.

A group of Order members had gathered together like an angry swarm of bees, Mrs Weasley and Tonks at the front, talking loudly, interrupting each other and, in the case of Mrs Weasley, balancing precariously on the verge of tears.

Silently, Draco and Harry half rounded the room until they could see what was at the receiving end of the Order's anger.

Snape and Hermione stood opposite the crowded group, only a few steps separating them from their fellow members, but they were as clearly excluded as if somebody had drawn a line. In the middle, perched between the groups, stood the Headmaster, obviously trying to talk sense into Mrs Weasley.

Still without a word, Draco touched his arm and directed his attention back to Snape and Hermione. It took Harry less than a second to understand what the Slytherin had noticed, and he frowned. Something wasn't right with the way Hermione held herself. She seemed to be trembling, and her face was nearly devoid of colour.

Snape had half positioned himself in front of her, as if to shield her from something she normally would have shrugged away as a nuisance. From their vantage point, Harry could see that Hermione had grasped the Spymaster's hand tightly, holding onto him like a drowning woman to her lifeline.

Something was definitely wrong with her, and whatever the cause, it was time to lift some of the attention away from her.

"What happened?" He asked loudly, causing Mrs Weasley to stop her tirade in mid sentence, only to turn around and direct words as shrill and excited at him.

"What happened?" She repeated loudly, her posture screaming anger at him. "What happened is that we just surprised Hermione and our dear Spymaster in a most strange situation! Can you guess my surprise when I stepped into this room and saw the two embracing, he kissing her in a way no teacher should kiss a student?"

"He isn't a teacher anymore," Was all Harry managed to say, a rather lame retort that earned him a snort from Draco, but inside, his mind was racing.

What could have caused Hermioen and Snape to let their guard fall like that? They were always so careful? How could they not have noticed Mrs Weasley had arrived?

"What does that have to do with anything?" Mrs Weasley hissed back and returned her attention to her prey, obviously finding Harry of no further interest.

He looked over to them once more and noticed that Hermione had even stepped closer to the body of the Spymaster, as if seeking comfort from something, although Mrs Weasley was watching them like a snake watched a mouse.

Something must have unhinged her badly, Harry decided, something so intense that she had needed comfort desperately. Snape tended to forget the world around him when he concentrated on Hermione, especially when they did what Tonks had dubbed their "mind thingy".

Hermione looked as if she badly needed some time to compose and calm herself, to regain control over her feelings, and although the sneer on Snape's face made more than clear what he thought about this farce of a confrontation, he hadn't ended it yet. Either he was unable to summon his authority as Spymaster at the moment, or he was fearing it wouldn't be enough.

Whatever the reason for this conflict that was spiralling directly out of control, they needed someone to intercept some of the emotion flying around and channel it into safer canals.

Obviously, Draco had come to the same conclusion.

"Shouldn't we all sit down?" He proposed hesitatingly, but with an undertone in his voice that told them all how silly they looked, crowding together like a herd of sheep.

"An excellent idea, Mr Malfoy," Dumbeldore agreed hastily, relieved that someone had come to his rescue. "Let us all take our seats and calm down a little. I'm sure we can clear up this little misunderstanding like civilised people…"

"Is it civilised of him to kiss a girl half his age?" Mrs Weasley asked sharply, but complied after a moment and followed the others over to the table. Hermione and Snape went last, and when she passed, still pale and trembling slightly, she mouthed a "thank you" to Harry, who silently took her by an arm and walked her to her chair by his side. Draco followed Snape, to sit at his left as he usually did.

With a slightly too exuberant swish of his wand, Dumbledore placed cups with hot cocoa in front of everyone, and Harry couldn't stop his eyes from rolling with irritation. Really, did the Headmaster think sweets were a remedy for everything?

He saw, from the corner of his eyes, that Snape was rolling his eyes, too, not bothering to hide it, and gave an answering swish of his wand, substituting his and Hermione's cup with large mugs, filled with that spice tea they so obviously favoured.

Harry returned his attention to Hermione and saw her clutching the mug as if it was a lifeline, but not once looking up to acknowledge its source. Obviously, her Slytherin instincts had kicked back in again and warned her not to show any closer relation with Snape.

Not that anything she could do would help them stop Mrs Weasley, now. Harry had witnessed too many family quarrels during his time at the Burrow to believe that even for a second.

"Now, Molly," Dumbledore began in what was obviously intended as a soothing voice. "Let us go about this sensibly."

_Stop raging like a hysterical Gryffindor,_ Harry translated silently in the safety of his mind, and saw a spark of amusement dance in Draco's eyes, telling him that his friend was busy reading between the lines, too.

"Of course I do not know what you saw," _Meaning that he is unable to support her interpretation. _"But it is more than likely that the situation is easily explainable. Perhaps what you witnessed was a mental contact between Severus and Miss Granger? They look strangely intimate, as we have surely all noticed before."

_And no one took them as cause to start a small scale war. _

Harry's eyes were glued to Dumbledore. He had always suspected his Headmaster to be more subtle than he led on, and this suspicion allowed him to notice the slight raise of his eyebrow. He turned his head around, not so quick that it would call attention to the movement, but fast enough that he could notice their Spymaster's answering eyebrow.

"That was indeed the situation the three… plunged into," Snape agreed, adding just enough sneer and condescension to his voice that it would make Tonks, and hopefully Mrs Weasley, too, feel foolish, but not enough to awaken their spite.

"Hermione had just returned from a Death Eater meeting, during which she learned a few useful things. Not the least of them is that our strategy of isolating Potter seems to be working in the Dark Lord's eyes. He encouraged her to…"

And as simple and elegant as this, Snape had turned the Order member's attention away from the more than compromising situation they had caught them in, handing out instead something none of them would refuse – inside knowledge about a Death Eater meeting.

Normally, both Snape and Hermione were more than reserved in that respect, only willing to hand out bare facts and conclusions. They knew how curious everyone around the table was about the dealings within the dark Inner Circle that mirrored their own, and in a wish to divert attention, Snape was handing out that currency freely. Not freely enough to make anybody wonder of course, but it sufficed to turn their minds away from more dangerous fields.

Most minds, at least.

"I am not satisfied with that explanation," Mrs Weasley's voice cut the middle of a conversation between Hermione and Voldemort in half. "I have seen their mental rapport, and that was not it. It was a kiss, simple and clear."

Snape shut his mouth with an expression of utter irritation and gave her his patented glare. It didn't help.

Harry could have told him so.

"I thought it was strange when I found out how closely the two work together," Mrs Weasley continued, directing her words entirely to the left side of the table, away from Harry, Draco, Hermione and Snape, as if she had judged them all unworthy of an explanation. "I was worried when I saw their intimate way of talking and teasing, but I kept silent because I always knew Severus as an honourable man," Mrs Weasley paused, to dart a look at the honourable man who looked very willing to shrink her tongue and use it as shrivelfig this very instance. "But this simply goes to far! First that strange way they can read each other's mind, and now I find them kissing and embracing each other!"

"I don't believe this is a matter worthy to discussed by a war council," Snape sneered, his voice icy. "We have more important problems to concentrate on than imagined…"

"This _matter_ happened in the middle of this very war council's meeting room," Mrs Weasley disagreed, her words now as sharp and scolding as they only got when the twins were concerned. _Uh oh. We're just lucky that Ron and the twins aren't here, or we would have a Weasley war on us tonight._ "And I for once have no interest in allowing _matters_ like that to happen under my very nose, just because some people here feel too important to acknowledge them!"

Despite his training, Harry felt his eyes widen in shocked surprise. He had expected arguments, yes, anger from Mrs Weasley, but not a full blown attack, directed against Dumbledore, Snape, and everyone who wasn't willing to discuss her suspicions right now. There was no way McGonagall or Lupin could add their opinion now without being accused of 'not caring' for what went on under their noses. They would have to clear this up, now, or produce a rift within the Order.

To Harry's left, he could feel magic coil and twitch, and as he turned towards the source of the strange sensation, he saw Hermione's hands had started to tremble, her face grey with exhaustion and growing pain. While Mrs Weasley started another tirade on what she had seen, her voice unpleasantly loud in the silent room, Hermione closed her eyes slowly, swallowing once, twice. She looked like someone who desperately wanted to regain control, but knew at the same time that it was hopeless.

It seemed that Snape had noticed the signs of rising trepidation, too, for he interrupted Mrs Weasley in mid-speech.

"You should leave now, Hermione," He stated calmly, and Hermione complied instantly, without a word or expression in her face she rose and stepped away from the table.

"What do you mean, leave?" Mrs Weasley protested, flustered. "We are not finished with this! She can't simply leave, and who are you to command her?"

"The man who knows what she needs right now," Snape replied, not even bothering to sneer, and, placing an arm around her shoulders, led the shivering Hermione over to the door of his office.

Mrs Weasley, finally speechless, stared after them from a moment, but when the office door closed with a decisive sound, silencing wards flaring into action, she left her place and strode over to the door with determination.

Without hesitating a second, Harry stepped into her way.

"You shouldn't disturb them now, Mrs Weasley," He told her, trying his best to keep his voice respectful. Always let them keep their face, Draco had taught him. Never mortify somebody or he will do anything to put you in the wrong.

"What do you mean, disturb them, Harry?" Mrs Weasley protested. "What are they doing in there that I could possibly disturb? She looked terrible just now, when he led her away!"

"With all due respect, Mrs Weasley," Harry said firmly, took her by the shoulders and directed her back to her chair. "But that's absolutely none of your business."

Mrs Weasley was so shocked by his words that she simply let him press her down to her seat, staring up at him with a dumbfounded expression. Most of the other Order members mirrored her surprise.

"What is going on here?" Tonks now asked. "Do you know something we don't, Harry?"

"I can assure you that all this has nothing to do with Order business, and you have no right to interfere," Harry answered, as firmly as he had talked to Mrs Weasley, and walked back to position himself between the office door and the rest of the Order.

If anybody wanted to walk in on Snape and Hermione, his expression clearly stated, he would have to get past him first.

"I think Harry is absolutely right," Remus agreed quietly, and many heads whipped around to him in surprise. "Hermione is of age, and Severus isn't her teacher anymore. Whether they embrace and kiss or not, that is not our business. We have no right to judge."

"You may say what you want, but this isn't healthy!" Mrs Weasley protested. "He is a middle aged man in an authority position, and she is just a girl! A few months ago they still hated each other! It's simply not… normal!"

"Normal?" Harry couldn't believe his ears. "Perhaps you should consider the circumstances before you speak, Mrs Weasley," He said, his voice colder than she had ever heard it. "With whom in this chamber do you want to speak about normalcy? With Remus?" He gestured over to the older man who was still sitting in his place by the window. "Who has been bitten by a werewolf before he could even pronounce the word? With Moody, who was locked inside a trunk for nine months? With Draco, who has been trained to be a Death Eater since before he could walk and has betrayed his whole family to help us?" He paused, his eyes still on Mrs Weasley, who had shrunk in her chair as if she wanted to be somewhere else quite desperately. "Or with me, whose parents were killed before he got to know them and who has survived confrontations with Voldemort since I was eleven?"

She opened her mouth to say something, but he sent her a withering glare, so angry by now that he didn't care about respect.

"I really wonder where your concept of normalcy stems from, Mrs Weasley! Both have done and seen things you can't even imagine, and if they can help each other through it, they have my blessings! Hell, they would even have that if they decided to marry!"

"I can't express how happy that makes me, Potter," A dry voice behind him said, and he whirled around and met the smirking face of Severus Snape. But though his words had been mocking, there was something in his face he had seen only once before, when he had presented Draco's and his idea about the prophecy, a slight note of appreciation perhaps, a grudging respect where before only derisiveness had dwelt.

"Hermione is resting in my office, and I would advise you all against rousing her. She is not well," He informed them shortly, his eyes resting on Mrs Weasley especially.

"Another seizure?" Remus inquired quietly from his place near the window. Snape simply nodded and resumed his place at the foot of the table.

"You wanted to discuss something, Molly. Now is the right time for it, I guess. We wouldn't want to disturb Hermione with this."

But Mrs Weasley was diverted by Remus' question. "Seizures," She asked, irritation in her voice. "What kind of seizures?"

"The kind caused by Cruciatus," Snape answered calmly. "I believe you visited Frank and Alice Longbottom after they were tortured?"

Molly turned quite pale, and so did the rest of the Order.

"Hermione is suffering from that?" Arthur Weasley finally whispered, his hands clenched tightly around the corners of his chair.

"All Death Eaters are," Snape dismissed their shock coldly. "What did you think she was doing at the revels? Serving tea?"

Mrs Weasley's expression told Harry that she had, indeed, convinced herself of something like that. But the realization didn't quiet her for long. Once the Weasley matriarch was on a trace, it was nigh impossible to distract her.

"This still doesn't explain your… position just now," She protested loudly. "What business had you embracing Hermione like that?"

"The business of consoling her, and giving her strength, Molly," Snape answered, not hiding how very ludicrous he thought this whole conversation.

"I have never seen you hug another spy, or Harry when he had one of his bad dreams," Mrs Weasley remarked slyly, her eyes narrowed in antagonism. Harry couldn't help but shudder at the idea of Snape hugging him, and so did, he noticed, their Spymaster.

Snape sighed. Suddenly, he looked worn and weary as he met Mrs Weasley's cold stare.

"Perhaps I should inform you that the meeting Hermione had just returned from was much more stressful than what she usually has to endure," He said, no emotion at all in his voice. "A muggle girl of four years died in her arms tonight. She had witnessed the death of her father and been tortured by the Death Eaters. Hermione ended her suffering with her own hands, pretending that she had misjudged the strength of the girl. She was duly punished for it. As you can probably imagine, the experience… distressed her."

Harry averted his face, not wanting the other Order members to see the horror in his eyes. Hermione had always refused to tell him what was going on during those revels, what she was forced to do while she played her role.

Now he knew, and he understood why she had so adamantly kept silent. Involuntarily, his eyes searched for Draco's, which mirrored his own sentiments, but with a darker, bitter edge to it. What was it like, to grow up with a man who was capable of such acts, who was, if he interpreted Draco's bitter comments about his father correctly, even enjoying them? And what was it like to have an affair with such a man, to be forced to follow his every bidding?

For a moment, he wanted nothing so badly as rush into Snape's office and embrace Hermione tightly, protecting her from this world of evil she had entered, and protecting himself from the images that flooded his mind.

But still Mrs Weasley plunged on, and though Harry wanted to shout at her to stop this useless questioning, he remained silent. He knew well enough how easily Mrs Weasley exploded in such a frame of mind, and they didn't need that kind of confrontation right now. She wouldn't stop till she had her answer, and perhaps it was best to let Snape deal with it now, while Hermione was out of the room.

"Is there more between Hermione and you than just friendship?" Mrs Weasley asked, pale but determined.

For the first time, Snape hesitated, clearly not sure what to say. "I don't see how this question might concern the Order," He finally answered.

"Believe me, it does… Do you and Hermione share more than a friendship?" She repeated with a decidedly sharper voice.

"Yes, we do," The answer was clear and delivered without the slightest hesitation, but it didn't originate from Snape. When they whirled around, they saw Hermione standing in the doorway, her eyes shining and her chin raised in defiance, though she couldn't quite hide how she had to support herself on the door frame.

"You should rest," Snape told her, completely ignoring the shocked silence that her answer had caused with the Order.

"I know. So should you."

It was Draco who walked over to her while silence descended on them all, and presented her with his arm as support. She took it gladly, and he led her back over to her chair, resting his hand on the her shoulder for a moment before he returned to his place.

Finally, Mrs Weasley rediscovered her voice. "What do you mean by that, my dear," She asked, clearly trying to keep her tone compassionate and friendly. "Is there something… romantic between you?"

She sent Snape a sharp glance at that, obviously doubting very much that their Spymaster was capable of something even remotely romantic.

The smirk on Hermione's face seemed to echo her thoughts. "Define romantic," She simply answered, and Mrs Weasley blushed violently.

"I…," She stammered. "That is…"

For a moment, Harry seriously expected her to fall into the speech about kissing and holding hands she had given to each of the Weasley children and himself a few years ago, but Snape's answer stopped her.

"If you have to know," He said simply, his voice softer and more velvety than Harry had ever heard it. "Hermione is the love of my life. She is my soul."

It would have been utter kitsch from everybody else. With Snape however, it was simply the truth, and the absoluteness and honesty of his words took Harry's breath away. He watched Hermione and Snape as they shared one long, unreadable look, then turned their faces away from each other and back to Mrs Weasley in perfect unison.

Though it was silent, and subtle, and nothing more than a look at passed between them, it was the most tender thing Harry had ever seen. From the expressions on Draco's and Remus' faces, they were thinking the same.

"Congratulations, then," Harry broke the silence, relieved that his words sounded warm and strong. "I am glad for you both."

"Thank you, Harry," Hermione smiled at him, and something in her eyes told her how much his words meant to her, even though she had known he accepted their relationship for a long time. Snape simply lowered his head in acceptance of his words, but again, Harry saw some glimmer of respect in his eyes.

"But Hermione, my dear…" Mrs Weasley now stammered, clearly still not willing to accept this as the truth. "Are you sure? I mean… You're very young, and inexperienced, and vulnerable…"

Hermione's smile faded, and now there was something dangerous in her eyes, a Don't-go-there-warning Harry had learned to recognize quickly over the years.

"Don't talk to me about experience, Mrs Weasley," She said with finality in her voice.

Mrs Weasley, however, seemed oblivious to the atmosphere in the room.

"But you're barely of age, my dear," She continued, not noticing the chilly stare that Snape gave her. "When we reach a certain stage in our life, we experience… feelings and desires that are new to us, and sometimes, we misinterpret them and confuse love with…"

"Are you saying that I can't tell the difference between sex and love?" Hermione laughed, a short, cold bark that made Mrs Weasley flinch, then her voice turned icy in an instance. "Perhaps you should converse about that with Lucius Malfoy, Mrs Weasley. He would tell you how very… experienced I am. But oh… I forgot… he wouldn't let you live long enough to ask the question."

That said, Hermione rose and slowly walked over to the magic tapestry that connected Snape's rooms to the office. She placed her palm on the cloth, whispered something, and was gone a moment later.

"That was easily the most stupid thing you ever said, Molly," Professor McGonagall commented after a moment of strained silence. "To tell her she was inexperienced… now really!"

"But she is!" Mrs Weasley protested heatedly, her eyes darting to Snape and away again, as if she was afraid how he would react. "She is only eighteen, and Severus is twenty years her senior! From what Ron and Harry told me, she never had a boyfriend before, and now she has a relationship with a former Death Eater and spy. I don't say your intentions are anything but honest, Severus, but she is so very vulnerable! He could hurt her without knowing."

"She is anything but vulnerable, Mrs Weasley," Harry remarked dryly. "The last time I tried to sneak up to her to hug her, she very nearly shattered my throat. She has been through things you would never dream of. Treating her like this is insulting in the least!"

"Now Harry, just because she is a spy and has learned a lot of things over the years doesn't mean she is versed in the ways of love…"

Draco just snorted to that. He was still a bit insecure in dealing with the Order, but his amusement clearly got the better of him. "She definitely is versed enough in those ways to have seduced my father," He commented as dryly as Harry had a moment before. "And he _is_ experienced, I can tell you."

"Your… father… what…" This time, all colour had drained from Mrs Weasley, and it seemed that she was speechless. Finally.

Unfortunately, neither Mr Weasley nor Tonks were sharing her state of acute confusion.

"You had better explain that comment to us, Draco," Arthur Weasley said, a deep frown in his face. "I think I misunderstood you."

"You understood him perfectly," Harry cut in, not wanting Draco to bear the outrage this piece of information would cause. "How do you think did she gain entrance to Voldemort's Inner Circle? By writing a letter?"

"But… how?"

Harry just shrugged, not willing to let on how much this information had shocked him, too, in the beginning. "She is a beautiful, intelligent and very determined young woman," He answered casually. "I do believe it is obvious."

"But how can she stand being touched by that Death Eater?" Tonks, clearly disgusted by the very thought.

"By putting the needs of others above her own," Harry answered coldly, not liking where this was going.

"If you think that is her reason…" Mrs Weasley's voice, Harry decided, sounded extremely ugly when she was trying her hand on sarcasm.

"What?" Harry hissed, not believing what he had just heard.

The voice of Mrs Weasley, for once not aggressive but thoughtful in an ominous way, answered his question and once more plunged the group around the table into chaos.

"Perhaps she is farther on the Dark side than we thought," She said quietly.

Ice filled Harry's veins. He was sure that it would soon make way for other feelings, but right now there was no place for anything but disbelief and disappointment.

"I can't believe you just said that, Mrs Weasley," He whispered.

"Harry, my dear, I know you like her very much, and I won't question that she _was_ a good friend, but do you really thing you should have close contact to someone who… with Lucius Malfoy…" Disgust was written clearly on Mrs Weasley's face, and though no one seconded her, he could see mirrored feelings on many faces in the room.

Red fury rose in Harry at the realization of how easily they turned away from her, dismissing her acts as something despicable and choosing to ignore _why _she did it. For the first time, Harry understood Snape's bitterness and scorn, and he opened his mouth to start shouting. But it seemed that someone had been quicker than he.

One moment Snape was leaning back in his chair, the next one he was on his feet, his eyes blazing and the crackling aura of his magic dominating the room in a heartbeat.

"Enough!" He roared, and every single piece of glass in the room shattered into silvery dust.

Abruptly, the room had plunged into a dead silence. Even Dumbledore had ducked his head to avoid the sudden explosion of will and magic.

"I have always doubted the intelligence of this council," Snape continued now, and although his voice was back to its usual, silky baritone in an instant, and nothing in his face and posture suggested that he held anything less than perfect control, they could feel the magic pulsing behind his every word, wanting to be let out, to compel, punish and destroy. Harry shuddered.

"I have known that you prefer your Gryffindor righteousness to the things that have to be done. I have known that you rather look away from the truth than acknowledge you aren't as pure and faultless as you think yourself to be. But this goes too far."

Another pulse of magic drove the message home, and Harry saw that Mrs Weasley's hands were clenched around the edges of her chair. She was clearly frightened. Good. She deserved it.

"Hermione has done this Council a priceless service, something none of you spineless do-gooders would have been able to accomplish, and yet you are so afraid of what she has become that you would rather let her die than support her. You have treated her with mistrust, have questioned her loyalty, her competence and her intelligence. All that she has tolerated. But I will not allow you to question the way she lives her life.

"Hermione is the most precious thing in my life, and I would kill for her without a moment's hesitation. You should keep in mind, all of you, that though I may not be a spy any longer, I know ways to destroy you and your families that you would never dream of," It wasn't a threat, Harry realized as he watched the dark figure of his Potions Master and his icy stare that somehow managed to fix every single person in the room. It was a simple fact.

"Hermione has let your behaviour go on for far too long," Snape now told them, his voice a deathly caress running down their spines. "But it will end tonight. No questioning of her abilities, her life or her motives. I will not allow it. And if you are stupid enough to cross her, you should think twice about crossing me. Because I could wait for you in every shadow. And if you hurt her, I will make sure that my shadow is the last you see in life."

Sweeping one last glance over them, as if testing whether his words had achieved the desired effect – which they had, for they were all frozen in their seat with shock – he slowly straightened his robes and walked over to the tapestries, following Hermione through without a single look backwards.

It took them long minutes to recover, and even Harry had difficulties to remember that breathing was quite necessary for the body to function properly.

"That was so scary…" Tonks whispered after an endless silence, and Harry could see that most of them were more than tempted to agree with her.

"Well," Draco finally said, breaking the tension with a lopsided grin. "He always told us he could put a stopper in death."

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A/N: Review!


	52. And Is Never Shaken

A/N: Inspiration hit me last night and I thought I could as well surprise you with an unexpected update. But don't expect this frequency to become usual!

I'm afraid this chapter contains nothing but talking, but I assure you that the action of the next chapter will more than make up for it.

Thank you all for your reviews! I am glad that you liked the last chapter, and even more glad that you hated my version of Molly Weasley as much as I hate her!

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**And Is Never Shaken**

Dawn found them half lying, half sitting on the sofa that faced the fireplace. Hermione had fallen asleep hours ago, her face pressed so deeply into the folds of his shirt that he wondered how she could even breathe. But it seemed that she had needed the physical contact more dearly than oxygen, and he had done nothing but softly stroke her hair.

She hadn't talked to him about the Order meeting. She hadn't asked what had transpired within the room after she had left the Inner Circle to his mercy, although he was quite sure she could sense the way his magic had whipped and danced around him like a frenzied animal.

It _had_ been accidental magic that had shattered the glass last evening, although he had easily managed to cover up that slip in his control. But the fact that his discipline had failed, something that hadn't happened in more than a decade, told him how angry he really was, and that he had better stay away from the Order for a few days.

That had also been the gist of his note to the Headmaster, spiced up with a few acerbic comments about Albus' ability to control his council of mindless Gryffindors, and a few wistful comments about how they, unfortunately, needed the Inner Circle too much to annhilate it from the face of the earth, what a pity.

_It's a good thing those confrontations always seem to happen on Fridays or Saturdays_, He now mused, while levitating another wooden log onto the fire. But of course, Voldemort knew as well as anybody that he couldn't keep Hermione from classes too often without causing suspicions. The idea that the Dark Lord had to plan his revels according to a Hogwarts timetable was another amusing little tidbit that kept him from leaving his chambers and kill Molly Weasley.

He hadn't been so tempted by the Unforgivables for as many years as Hermione was alive.

After another hour of brooding and plotting and using his extensive knowledge about poisons to depict Mrs Weasley's death, Hermione stirred in his arms. It gave him a short stab of satisfaction to notice that the moment of panic, when her returning consciousness found her body in close contact with another human being, was nearly gone by now – just a short tensing of her muscles that relaxed too fast to be noticed by most people.

"Severus," She yawned, and the harshness of his mind melted away as if glorious spring had suddenly come to him.

She looked adoringly, the wrinkles of his shirt having caused creases all over her face, and her hair in wild disarray. She yawned again, like a kitten, her pink tongue stretched out a bit as if it wanted to taste air.

"Have you spent all night on the couch, watching over me?" She asked, and he shrugged.

"What better way to spend an anyway sleepless night? Good morning, love."

"You know, Severus," She announced sleepily as she slowly sat up and tried to return order to her hair, then to remove the wrinkles from his shirt. "All this plotting of revenge and murder isn't good for your health at all."

He didn't give a sign of surprise, not even the little twitches that betrayed the best actors.

"What makes you think that I would plot revenge?" He asked with just the right mixture of irritation, surprise and amusement.

She smiled in answer, then transfigured her slept in clothes with a gesture of her hand into a wide, burgundy skirt and a black top. Again, that surprised him. When she felt uneasy, she usually preferred black or grey trousers that made her look older and more professional, not this softer, feminine style. She had to feel relatively safe to wear such a skirt.

"The fact that I listened in on the Order yesterday, after I left," She answered simply, and now he did twitch. "I found out that you can keep the connection between the tapestries about a hair's breadth open, not for too long, but long enough to apply a _televisor_ spell in this case. A very impressive performance you gave them, I must say."

"You saw and heard everything," He repeated, feeling his anger again descending on him tenfold. The only silver lining he had found about the last evening had been the knowledge that Hermione hadn't found out what the Order, people who had known her for years, were willing to think about her.

"Pretty much," She confirmed easily, still looking unexplainably relaxed. "Of course, I missed the magical effects, which must have been quite impressive, judging from how they all looked at you. I think you officially crossed the line from 'impressive' to downright 'terror inspiring' last night. Tonks looked as if she might faint."

He sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose in silent irritation, and opened his mouth to ask her how she felt when all got even more complicated.

"Who is terror inspiring?" Jane's voice asked from the open kitchen door.

"Severus," Hermione answered, and rose to walk over to the dining table. "He was a right hero yesterday, threatening the whole Inner Circle with death and damnation."

"Why should he do that?" Jane asked, just as a more than generous breakfast appeared on the table.

Severus stood with a sigh, rolling his shoulders to ease the tension out of them, and watched the two women of the house chatting about him as if he weren't present, while they were pouring tea and pumpkin juice.

"Because the Order started wondering whether I didn't rather like being a Death Eater and serving as Malfoy's sex toy," Hermione answered dryly, her voice suddenly tired. "Mrs Weasley couldn't help but point out that I am not the right sort of friend for the Boy Who Lived under such circumstances."

For the blink of an eye, Jane's motions stopped and an expression of deep rage passed over her face. Snape stared. It was no secret that Jane liked Hermione and had readily accepted her as mistress of the household, but she seldom cared deeply enough for other people than Severus to let their fate move her. And she _never _expressed her emotions that openly.

"He has my blessings then," She now said, in the same dry voice Hermione had used, but where tiredness had lurked behind his love's voice, hers sported a dark determination. "I will fetch him the ingredients when he brews their poison."

Hermione had the gall to chuckle. "No talk about poisons while we prefer breakfast, please," She complained. "I am simply too aware how many of them are tasteless and undetectable."

"Oh, but not for a house elf, dear," Jane disagreed, while she waved at them and walked back to the kitchen. "We notice everything. And we never forget."

That sounded almost like a threat, and Severus couldn't help but smile at the thought that Molly Weasley was now on the "most hated" list of several quite dangerous wizards and magical creatures. He wondered how he could let her know without being too Gryffindorish obvious.

He waited until his old friend had vanished back into her rooms behind the kitchen, then walked over to where Hermione still stood, her eyes turned towards the distance.

"How do you really feel?" He asked quietly as she leaned into him and his arms came around her with a will of their own.

"I am tired," She answered just as quietly.

"You were right, Severus. You were right from the very beginning. All this time I have tried, and still they condemn me. I am different, and they will probably never understand."

"That must hurt."

She nodded. "It does, as you know better than most." Her hand fluttered to the left, like a little bird trying to fly for the first time. "But that is not what mattered most to me yesterday. Other things prevail, better things than their betrayal and my disappointment."

"What do you mean?" His hands tightened around her waist as he whispered the question in her ear, warmingly, protectively.

She smiled again and closed her eyes, whether to enjoy the moment or because she wanted to dive deep into her memories he didn't know.

"Yesterday, amidst all that anger and fear, I witnessed so much love," She breathed. "The way you protected me, the way Draco and Harry showed their support. Weren't they wonderful?"

She sighed, and turned around in his arms so that her eyes could meet his questioning gaze.

"Ever since I can think, I was afraid that people wouldn't like the real me, a feeling that only got worse over the years in Hogwarts. I never was that sure whether Ron and Harry only wanted me for their homework, or because they needed someone with quick thinking along on their adventures. But now… You three know all about me. Yesterday, they heard that I'd killed a little girl, and just like you, they forgave me. They tried to protect me in their very own way, just like you did."

She smiled again. "Isn't it strange that amidst all that hate and antagonism, I felt more loved than I ever had before?"

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"Hermione is not here. She has classes this afternoon," Snape told Harry as he stepped through the magical tapestry into his Spymaster's quarters.

Harry swallowed. He was feeling more than a bit uneasy about this, but the need to do it had followed him around for the last two days now, and he knew that feeling well enough to accept that it wouldn't go away until he complied.

"I know, sir. I chose this time _because _she was in class."

That got Snape's attention for sure. Harry swallowed again. Now he would probably receive a sneer and a caustic remark about time wasting Gryffindors and be sent on his way again.

"Have a seat, Mr Potter. Do you care for tea?"

Only Draco's and Hermione's training was stopping him from staring dumbly or simply turning around and running away. He had been wrong. A civil Snape was obviously much more scary than a rude one could ever be.

"Yes sir, thank you," He finally remembered to say and sat down rather abruptly. He was glad that his legs hadn't simply given way under him, landing him on the floor in an undignified heap.

Without giving any clue whether he had noticed Harry's confusion, Snape walked over to the large table, poured out a cup of tea, added two lumps of sugar and just a tiny splash of milk.

Harry gulped. That Snape had memorised the exact way Harry liked to drink his tea was not only scary, it was downright creepy. Fleeing from the room suddenly seemed much more interesting.

Snape handed him the cup with a slight lowering of his head, and Harry tried to answer the gesture as dignified as he was able to. "Thank you, sir."

"Now then, Mr Potter," Snape began after he had settled himself in an armchair opposite. "To what circumstances do I owe the honour of your visit?"

Harry searched for scorn or even humour in his eyes and face, but found none. He hadn't expected to. Snape was an excellent actor, after all.

He had thought long and hard about doing this, and, once he had come to the decision that it was time to face up Snape, finally, about how to do this. A Slytherin would have begun miles from his real interest and worked his way slowly into the direction he wanted to take, testing the ground every inch before committing himself.

But he wasn't a Slytherin. And helpful as Draco's lessons had been to him over these last months, essential as they were to him realizing a few things about Snape, and Hermione, and himself, this wasn't the time to try a dance he still only understood partly. This was the time to be a Gryffindor, with all the good and bad things that came along with it.

_Here goes…_, He thought, taking a deep breath.

"I came because I think we have a few things to discuss, Sir. And because I believe we should discuss them now, not wait another couple of years."

"Really," A cocked eyebrow, a face absolutely expressionless. As far as Harry knew, Snape was rolling on the floor laughing about the mad Gryffindor right now, in the safety of his mind.

"Yes, sir," He took another deep breath and tried to fight down the panic that was rising steadily inside him. "I came to say that I thought you a bastard for most of my school time, a vindictive, cruel, unjust Slytherin. And that I hated the way you treated Sirius, and Remus, and every Gryffindor you ever met."

He stopped, giving Snape a chance to throw him out of his chambers if he wanted to. But the only answer to his insults was a slight curling of his former teacher's lips. One couldn't call it a smile, not by far, but it wasn't a sneer, either, and that gave Harry hope enough to continue.

"I've done a lot of thinking over the last months and found out that I've been a bastard, too, more than once. The way I mistrusted you and stupefied you in third year and looked into your pensieve in fifth. I have been just as prejudiced as you were, and the fact that I was a child and you an adult doesn't change that, not really. I won't apologize for the things I said and did, and I don't expect you to apologize either, which you would never do, anyway. But I want to say that, for me, these things are in the past."

He stopped again, glancing up at Snape's face to judge the reaction to his little speech. The second eyebrow had joined the first in its risen state. Nothing else had changed.

"I learned a lot of things over the past months. I saw my best friend broken in a way I never dreamed of, and I saw her stronger than I could ever have imagined. I became friends with a Slytherin and enemies with my former Gryffindor friend. I have seen you in action, the _real_ you, not my Potions Master, and I've seen you together with Hermione. You could say that I had so many paradigm shifts it's a wonder I still know where up and down is.

"And the result is that, although I still think you're too scary by far, I respect you. I respect your competence, and your intelligence, and the love you share with Hermione. I was serious about the things I said during that Order meeting."

He shrugged and grinned. "And if Hermione choose you, you can't be that bad, anyway."

For a moment, he thought that he had read the signs of the last weeks incorrectly, that Snape hadn't been willing or ready for this talk. But then the other man's lips curved further, forming still not a smile, but very nearly so, and he knew that it had been the right thing to come.

"You are correct when you say that I will never apologize for my behaviour towards you, Mr Potter," Snape said, his voice relaxed and rich and somehow conveying appreciation while retaining its mocking quality. "But what I will do is admit that I was wrong about you."

Harry couldn't help himself. He gaped. The smile turned into an amused smirk almost instantly.

"I thought you were irresponsible, and while you _have_ behaved irresponsibly in the past, you have shown over the last months that you are able to overcome that character flaw. You have shown that you are willing to learn, and work hard. You have shown a regard for your friends and the future of our world that I hadn't expected from you."

Snape smiled, then, a thin but nevertheless honest smile that Harry had never expected from him, not in a thousand life times.

"And the truth is, Mr Potter, that while you are still too much a Gryffindor for my liking, I respect you. Your dedication to your friends, your will to fight and your courage that brought you here tonight."

_Draco was right,_ Harry thought slightly awed, _The man _could_ dissect shadows with a knife. And he dances with words_. He hadn't missed the way his former teacher had mirrored his little confession, how he had given word for word, praise for praise, criticism for criticism. He had matched his every step, his smile – the rare display of an open emotion – repaying Harry for his initiative.

They were level now, and if he left, they would remain level, balancing a fragile status quo.

If he wanted more, he would yet again have to make the first step.

"And what does that make us?" He asked quietly, not sure how to summarize what he had heard and said, but certain that he could meet Snape's subtlety only with the pure Gryffindor equivalent – total honesty.

"Allies, I believe," Snape answered after a moment, testing the word in his mouth before letting it pearl over his lips. "Colleagues. Hermione's family."

Harry nodded, feeling that this was as good an ending point as they would reach this evening. If that was what Snape would give him tonight, he was glad to take it.

"I think I like all three," He said, standing up and inclining his head in a silent gesture of respect.

Snape, recognizing the finality of this gesture, stood as well and mirrored it silently. He led Harry over to the tapestry that connected his chambers with the Order headquarters and activated the spell.

"Good night sir," Harry said, and readied himself to step through.

"Good night," Snape repeated, hesitated a moment and then nodded shortly, as if he had come to a decision. "Mr Potter?"

Harry, his leg already within the tapestry, turned half around to him. "Yes?"

"You might consider granting me the honour of calling me Severus," His Spymaster requested formally.

Harry smiled. "I will, sir," He answered. "And the honour will be all mine."

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"You really overdid it this time, Draco," Hermione announced sternly, arms crossed before her chest.

"Overdid what?" Draco asked innocently, fluttering his eyelashes and leaning back against the window sill he was sitting on.

"I had a delegation of first year Hufflepuffs waiting on my doorstep today, demanding your expulsion from the school because you are an, and I quote, 'evil, devilish fiend out to get them'."

"Oh, that," Draco said, just as innocently as if he hadn't been responsible for the nervous breakdown of a hoard of little Huffs. "Well, it's their own fault, really."

Hermione's lips twitched, but she managed to keep up the stern posture admirably. "I fail to see how," She said.

"For being so goddamn gullible, of course," Draco replied, pretending to pout. "That should be a criminal offence, really! And anyway, I was only terrorising them so that Harry could come and rescue them and be a good little hero."

"Oh, thank you," Harry said from the entrance to Snape's gym, where he had overheard the beginning of this little pseudo-confrontation. "I certainly appreciate it. If I can't rescue someone twice a day, I get all itchy."

"You see," Draco exclaimed, grinning in his I-told-you-so way. "I'm the real victim, here."

"Oh, sure," Hermione drawled. "And I know you suffered terribly from it."

"Terribly," Draco nodded earnestly.

Harry chuckled and, having walked over to them, pulled Hermione into a short hug. Five days had passed since her confrontation with the Order, and tonight she would join the Inner Circle meeting again. She had taken the situation well, better than he had expected, but still he felt the tearing need inside himself to protect her from Mrs Weasley's mindless cruelty. Sometimes he thought that he had never known how much she meant to him before he had found out how fragile and endangered her life was, day after day after day.

"How do you feel, Hermione?" He asked, careful not to lay too much emphasis on his words.

She smiled and leaned back against the wall so that Draco's knee nearly touched her right shoulder and Harry's arm her left.

"Protected," She answered after a moment, and let her eyes travel amusedly from one to the other.

"Severus delivered an impromptu speech about poisons that can be consumed by breathing, then tested the strength of my bubble-head spell. Really, sometimes he lacks subtlety."

"I hope Severus remembers that _I_ can't do the bubble-head spell," Harry muttered, and received a pure look of amusement from Hermione in answer.

"Don't mind him," Draco drawled amusedly. "He has said barely anything but 'Severus' over the last days. I think he's practicing in the hope of delivering it naturally."

Hermione chuckled, remembering how she had practiced using that very name while showering, so many months ago. She had been determined not to embarrass herself by stumbling over the syllables.

"I can remember how you called him by his name under every possible pretence when he allowed you to use it," She reminded Draco. "And instead of criticizing your student for preparing his lesson carefully, you had better tell me how things are with our dear Potions Mistress."

Draco didn't bother keeping the smug smile from his face.

"She asked me yesterday," He announced, clearly enjoying the moment.

"Draco, you prat," Harry shouted. "And you didn't tell me immediately?"

"I already told you the idea was brilliant, Harry," Draco answered condescendingly. "More praise from me and your head might swell. It is my duty to keep your feet on the ground, after all."

"I'm glad to hear it, Draco," Hermione said, her teeth glittering in the last rays of the sun as she smiled. "We will all sleep better now, I think."

Harry snorted, mimicking Draco's condescending tone quite credibly. "As if I ever lost a night's sleep over that brat prince," He protested, and Hermione rolled her eyes, too used by now to their bickering to even bother.

"And the faked prophecy?" She asked. "How's that going?"

"We are discussing the finer details of the wording," Harry answered, turning serious immediately. "We are not sure about a few things – perhaps you'd like to look over it later? We left everything in Severus'" He ignored the exaggerated sigh from Draco. "office."

Hermione nodded, and as if the mentioning of the Order headquarters had reminded them all of the meeting to come, soberness descended on the room.

"How is the Order doing? Are they coping?" Hermione asked after a moment, her voice and stance perfectly calm.

Harry lowered his head to indicate that he would prefer Draco answering. Although his opinion was valuable because of his close contact with many Inner Circle members alone, Draco's analyses of group dynamics and motives usually were better than his.

"They are stalling," Draco drawled, but not in the provocative way he would when trying to anger Harry. It was his thoughtful drawl, as Harry had come to call it, his way of talking when he was deeply thinking and trying to communicate at the same time. "Had the confrontation happened differently, they would be loudly demanding your exclusion by now. Moody is on your side, as are, of course, Dumbledore, McGonagall and Lupin. Shacklebolt is careful, the Weasley twins think it is all one big joke and you are the coolest person on earth," He smirked.

"As it is, Snape, Harry and Dumbledore have openly sided with you. That makes our party the more powerful one, and definitely the more significant. The Order can easily do without the Weasley mother hen – I have no idea why she was allowed to become a member, anyway -, but they can't do without their saviour, their leader and their spymaster. That gives you safe footing, I think."

"But still," Hermione remarked thoughtfully. "My behaviour could cause a rift in the Order that would never heal properly again. They are on edge now, and if I do something to disturb this careful balance, it would weaken us considerably."

"That's true," Draco nodded. "Although they are in no clear position of power, the Weasleys are and always were the epitome of a light family. Even if the Inner Circle could work without them, a conflict would cause difficulties with the Outer Circle and damage the Order's reputation with the public. We can't afford that, not now that our network with the aurors is developing so nicely. Not when we need their support on Halloween."

Hermione nodded, indicating her agreement.

"How should I behave, then?" She asked Harry, knowing that he would understand Mrs Weasley better than she or Draco ever could.

"Don't confront her," Harry answered immediately. He had thought about this before, long and hard. "Deep down, Mrs Weasley is feeling ashamed right now – she always is, just as Ron instinctively knows when he has behaved like a fool. But any confrontation with her misbehaviour would lead to an even greater explosion than the one we had the honour to witness," Draco smirked, amused by his choice of words. Harry could read the 'very Slytherin' in his eyes.

"I think you should behave as if nothing has happened. Give her time to accept the realities. She will move when she's ready, and if you give her further proof of your competence on the way, without rubbing it in, it will only quicken the process. I don't think you can do anything else."

"Further proof of my competence, you say?" Hermione asked, a strange fire dancing in her eyes. "That should be easy enough."

Draco grinned, and the way his face changed as he imagined Hermione's 'demonstration' made Harry think that the Hufflepuffs hadn't been so very wrong, after all. Devilish seemed a pretty fitting word for his expression right now.

"And it might be even more fun than Severus threatening to kill us all," The blond Slytherin said.

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"Did you gather anything new about Little John's assignment and the reasons for his death?" Remus asked after the main points of their agenda had been discussed.

The meeting had gone well so far, mostly because Remus, and Professor McGonagall, and Dumbledore had done their utmost to keep it going, and because no Order member dared stepping out of line with the glowering gaze of their Spymaster on them. Hermione had remained quiet, mostly, but had thrown in comments or arguments whenever it seemed helpful. Mrs Weasley hadn't looked at her once, concentrating on her assembled offspring instead, who was lining the table with a long row of red hair.

"Indeed, we did," Dumbledore answered, directing a smile towards Severus, who was sitting at the opposite end of the table, buried in reports.

"'Little John' was following a man named Clarence Dougall, an American wizard who has entered Great Britain two weeks ago. Dougall has a record of dealing with wizardry weapons and defence mechanisms, both legal and illegal. He supplied the werewolf riots in Wisconsin with silver-proof armours and sold equipment to the bunch of goblins that tried to break into Fort Knox a few years ago. Rumour has it that he came to England for a reason, and when Little John saw him in Diagon Alley, he thought his presence worthy of investigation. We still don't know what exactly took place in Knockturn alley, where Little John was found, but his mental report gives us at least a clue of what happened."

"Mental report?" Hestia Jones asked. "And what do these strange names mean? Little John?"

"Ah, that would be another one of Severus' ingenious ideas," Dumbledore answered happily, earning himself a snort from the still reading Spymaster. "We can't tell you much, obviously," Something in the way he said this made Harry believe that this was mainly because the Headmaster didn't really know that much, but preferred not to let that on. "But so much should be safe information: Severus trained and assigned different spy groups, never consisting of more than ten people. Every group has its own set of codes, names, locations and contact methods which revolve around a mythical or fictional story."

"Like Robin Hood's merry men from Sherwood Forest," Professor McGonagall cut in, displaying once more her knowledge of muggle literature.

"Exactly," Albus nodded pleasantly. "One of the things Severus trained them to do was deliver a 'mental report' into a magical device embedded in their arms every ten minutes. This magical device was extracted from his body and told us that Dougall had a secret meeting with someone who looked very much like Auden Strong

"Not good that," Moody grumbled from behind his cup of coffee. "Not good at all."

Only now did Snape raise his head from the parchment he had studied. "That is the understatement of the month, Mad-Eye," he commented calmly. "Strong is a known supporter of the Dark Lord. If he contacted Dougall, it means that Voldemort intends to rely on more than just manpower during his next battle. If Dougall travels to England, that means he is most likely interested in taking the order. And we can't risk the use of unknown weaponry on the Death Eater's side. This could turn the tide to their favour."

"I used my influence in the ministry to "accidentally" meet his secretary, a very charming woman by the way," Bill continued, grinning broadly. "We got into talking, and after I invited her to a glass of wine or two, she told me all about her boss' activities in England. Imagine how surprised I was when a very familiar name popped up…"

"It seems that my brother Aberforth has invited Mr Dougall to one of his infamous balls, and Mr Dougall has accepted gladly, knowing that my dear brother has a … hand for the more beautiful part of the female sex," Dumbledore said, his eyes twinkling.

"I contacted my brother immediately, and though he was slightly hesitant at the beginning, he was courteous enough to send me six invitations, for me and whatever colleague or student might want to visit the ball. He was rather curious to meet you, Harry", Dumbledore smiled.

Snape took over the thread of conversation while Harry tried to reconcile himself with the fact of another ball. He had still not gotten over the experience of the Yule Ball in his fourth year, and somehow, he expected this to be not much better.

"Thus, as it seems that Mr Dougall is all too inclined to interact with females of a certain attractiveness, all we need is a female Order member that will render him talkative during the festivity, and get near enough to him to check his private notes and schedules."

"You mean like Mata Hari," Harry asked, creating a good bit of confusion among the not muggleborn Order members.

"Who's Mata Harry?" Tonks inquired, clearly mistaking her for one of Harry's relations.

"Well," Hermione sighed once the discussion about World Wars, female spies in general and the infamous Mata Hari had subsided. "As long as we can make sure no Death Eater enters the vicinity of that ball, I guess I should take the job."

Her announcement was met with a simple nod from Snape and doubting to astonished looks from the rest of the Order.

"Not a good idea," Moody finally said. "We should let Tonks do it."

"You know that we're seriously low on female spies", Hermione protested. "And Tonks wouldn't manage to hold up appearance for more than five minutes… sorry Tonks, nothing personal."

Tonks just winked at her, obviously glad that she hadn´t been forced to make the point.

"So unless you want to employ Professor McGonagall or Mrs Weasley," Both women visibly bristled at the thought of it. "I am the best for the job."

Nervous silence settled inside the room. Finally, when obviously realizing that no one else would say it out loud, Bill cleared his throat.

"I don't want to be personal either, Hermione", he started, desperately looking for help within the circle of Order members, "But we need someone with… very special talents for this job. Someone extremely beautiful, seemingly dumb and…" Harry noticed Snape's lips twitching wildly and the half amused, half angry expression on Hermione's face and knew that Bill had managed to get himself into a mess the size of America, "… and very seductive."

"I can be all that, Bill", Hermione simply answered, and when she saw the continuing look of disbelief on his face, smirked, "If you don't believe me, just ask Severus."

Across the room, a muffled sound was heard as Molly Weasley very nearly choked on her tea.

Had the silence been nervous before, it now became increasingly embarrassed. Harry, refusing to meet anybody's eyes, took sudden interest in his badly polished shoes. He hadn't been mad enough to start this discussion, and he certainly would not be the one to tell Hermione that Severus Snape's opinions of beauty and seductiveness did not necessarily agree with the rest of the world.

The silence stretched, until the velvety voice of the Spymaster himself released them.

"I'm afraid they lack faith in you, Hermione. A pity."

Heads shot up towards Hermione, who crossed her arms before her chest in mock defiance.

"You are the Spymaster, it is your decision," She pointed out half amused, half irritated. "Or do you lack the faith, too?"

He smirked at her, as sardonically as anyone had ever seen him smirk. "Good gracious, I'm not mad," He drawled. "I wouldn't leave the thing to anyone gifted with less… developed talents than yours."

His open leering created another uproar of shocked murmurs, but she just smirked back at him and cocked an eyebrow, imitating him so perfectly for a moment that everyboedy's belief in her acting talents rose enormously.

Then, all traces of humour left her as she faced the Order members sitting around the table.

"Right then. We need the guest list," She said, her voice all business now. "I need to know how tall he is, and what type of women he prefers, the unruly ones, the stupid, simpering ones, or the seductive ones. We have to make sure that no Death Eater comes near the place, and I have to know the exact colours of the rooms' decorations and the servants' liveries. I also have to know how he normally dresses and where he keeps his personal belongings – whether in his trouser pockets, in some pocket of his robe or in a bag attached to his body. Professor Dumbledore, you had best contact your brother again about the details, and Bill should surely manage to accidentally meet that secretary of his once more? Ask her if her boss molests her, and she will surely plunge into a detailed description of his favourite type of women."

"Why do you need to know all that?" Tonks asked, bewildered. Clearly she wouldn't have put as much thought into the assignment.

"Because, dear Tonks," Hermione grinned. "If you want to seduce a man, you have to do it just perfect."

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A/N: I hope you enjoyed this! Next chapter, we're going to go dark again. _Really _dark, so brace yourselves!


	53. Forget Me Not

A/N: Warning: This chapter earned its rating. It has blood, pain and nearly a character death.

That said, I would like to point your attention to my newest toy - the livejournal I created to keep you informed about the rather inconsequential and slightly mad things that go on in my head. You can access it via my profile page, or simply search for lioness-kayly. Feel free to comment or add me to your friends list - I'd be honoured, really!

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**Forget Me Not**

Days rushed past them while Harry trained, planned and still managed somehow to study for the approaching NEWTs. In all its madness, his life as member of the Order, Boy Who Lived and friend to the Master Spy and the Slytherin prince had turned into something like routine.

The Order had mellowed into some sort of silent acceptance of Hermione's and Severus' relationship (and it was just downright irritating how difficult it still was to use that name naturally), aided by the fact that their behaviour around them hadn't changed the least. Mrs Weasley alone was still watching them like a hawk, but at least she managed to great Hermione courteously these days without making her disapproval outright clear.

Though Harry worried about the final outcome of their plan and was more than once plagued by nightmares, he also found himself wondering about his future, that time he had tried to ignore for more than a year. He wasn't so sure about the auror programme any longer, but Quidditch wasn't an option to him, not after all the things he had learned and witnessed.

On the whole, it was just too easy to forget how dangerous life was for them all, and how fragile. But the Thursday before Aberforth Dumbledore's ball reminded him of both facts in a way he would never again forget.

The evening started like any other these days. When eight o'clock arrived, Hermione was still absent, as were Hestia Jones, Flitwick and Ron, but Severus explained that she had been called and that it would be fruitless to wait for her.

So Dumbledore opened the meeting with a few words concerning the recruiting of Outer Circle members, and then Remus started to report on the recent developments among the werewolves.

He was half way through an explanation of their clan structure when Severus suddenly hissed in pain and clutched his left arm. For a single moment of shock, Harry believed that it had been the Dark Mark, but then he saw a ring on Severus's left hand, glowing a bright, flaming red.

For one second, Severus went completely still. "Hermione," He whispered tonelessly, and then he bolted from his chair, overturning it, and raced over to the magical tapestries. "Minerva, follow me! Draco, the emergency bag in my room!" He shouted without looking back, and to the left of Harry, Draco snapped into action as well.

He didn't look back to the as he stepped through the tapestry, but there was no question that most of them would follow him. Minerva left the room second, with Dumbledore and Remus right on her heels. Draco came next, clutching a huge back of dark leather against his chest as if it could give him some sort of hold on reality. His eyes searched Harry's, who nodded and went next.

They found themselves in a dusty dungeon storage room, a place completely unknown to Harry. A trail of footsteps led them out of the room, into a long corridor that Harry vaguely remembered from his explorations with the invisibility cloak, the only difference being that it had always ended with a solid stone wall. Now, however, there was an opening in said wall through which he could see Remus disappear.

He chanced a look behind him and saw Tonks and Bill Weasley entering the storage room. _We must look completely ridiculous_, He thought, but then his worry flared again and he quickened his steps to not lose Draco.

"Any idea what happened?" He whispered, casting a _Lumos_ to illumine their way. He could see Draco shaking his head with a jerky motion that expressed more fear than he hada ever seen from the Slytherin.

"It must be a real emergency if he reacts like that. But I only know that they were designing a ring to communicate a few weeks back. It seems to have worked."

The trip through the damp, dark underground tunnel seemed to take an eternity, but when they emerged into the all too bright light of an early evening, Harry could see Severus still rushing towards the edge of the grounds, McGonagall and Dumbledore directly behind him.

Suddenly, he stopped, and fell to his knees besides an old, gnarled tree.

Draco broke into a run, all Slytherin dignity forgotten for once, and Harry sped up besides him. He had nearly reached the spot where their Spymaster suddenly had abandoned all movement when he finally saw what lay on the ground, and stopped so abruptly that Tonks nearly barrelled into him.

A twitching bundle of skin, and blood, and torn cloth. Hermione, and now he knew why Severus had reacted so calmly to her appearance when Remus had discovered her that night so very long ago. This was much, much worse.

"Hermione," Severus said, carefully reaching out and softly stroking her hair back from her bloodied face. "What happened? Are they after you?"

Harry wanted to tell him that it was impossible she could answer, that she was more dead than alive, for goodness sake, but under Severus's soft touches her eyes slowly, painfully opened.

"They faked it," She moaned, blood seeping from the corner of her mouth. "The goddamn bastards dared to fake the Dark Lord's call! I will destroy every single one of them…"

"Hermione, I need to know what happened," Severus's voice was urgent, his whole being fixed on her body that convulsed with pain. "Can you tell me?"

Hermione opened her lips as if to speak, but only blood escaped her mouth, and it was obvious to all those gathered around her that she had no strength left. Suddenly, her left arm shot upwards, grabbed Severus's neck and drew him down towards her.

Although nothing visible happened, it seemed to all of them that somehow she pushed something towards the Spymaster. He was hurled backwards to the ground and she closed her eyes with a last ghost of a moan.

For one moment, Severus lay entirely still, his face showing nothing but shock and excruciating pain, and Harry understood that with her last strength, Hermione had pushed her memories into him, memories of fear and torture, condensed into one single, terrible second.

Then Severus's eyes snapped open. They looked haunted and lost, the normal burning black replaced by a hollow void, but he functioned as fast and efficient as Harry had ever seen him.

"Minerva," He shouted, not caring that she was crouching directly besides him. "She has a concussion, take care of that. I will deal with her pierced lung. Her liver might be ruptured, too."

He stretched out a hand, and without a word passing between them, Draco handed him his bag. Severus ripped it open and selected potions with hands as calm and quick as if this was nothing but a demonstration in class. Harry looked down at his own hands and found them trembling violently.

Professor McGonagall had fallen on her knees besides Hermione's now still head. Her lips were moving as she whispered enchantments, and her wand was fulfilling intricate motions Harry had never seen before. But he had been unconscious nearly every time he entered the infirmary, so his experience about medical magic was restricted to being treated.

"Only stabilize her," Severus ordered as he poured a potion into Hermione's slack, bloodied mouth, working her throat to assist her in swallowing. "We'll have to get her to a safe place as soon as possible."

His voice was calm and controlled, but Harry could now see a terrible anger burning in his eyes. The Spymaster was as near to the explosion point as Harry had ever seen him, and only his perfect control kept him healing and organizing. For the first time, Harry understood what Severus had told him about discipline, back during their Occlumency lessons in year five. He himself would have panicked. Gods, he was experiencing the panic even now. And he was not in love with the woman dying in front of their eyes.

"Was she raped? Any internal bleeding we should take care of?" McGonagall asked, only a slight quiver to her voice showing her distress.

"No," Severus answered, his tone as flat as a machine's. As flat as Hermione's, Harry realized, when she had killed those Death Eaters in the Forbidden Forest and threatened Ron with his death. "Lucius wasn't with them, and they still respect that she is his possession. But they did nearly everything else one could possibly do with a human body," He added in a half whisper.

Harry felt totally helpless as he watched the two Professors fight for the life of his best friend.

"Let's take a look around," He finally whispered to Draco, who was staring at Hermione's body with burning eyes. "We should make sure that no one is near to see her like this. And someone should tell the rest of the Order what has happened."

As if torn from a dream, Draco's head snapped up. Then he nodded unsteadily. "Let's go," He whispered.

"I will tell the others," Tonks, who was standing by Harry's side, offered. Her eyes were full of tears.

"No need to," Severus interrupted from his place by Hermione's side. "She's stabilized. We will take her there directly. Remus, walk before us and send every student you meet to the dorms. I'll carry her."

His voice was still flat and without the slightest emotion, but when he took her up in his arms and cradled her softly against his chest, it was with the utmost tenderness and care. She moaned softly when he moved her, but she didn't open her eyes.

"You must stay awake, Hermione, do you hear me?" He whispered, and though Harry thought it impossible, he was answered by a tiny, tiny nod and a slight flutter of her eyelids.

Severus's steps were long and steady as he carried her through the grounds to the nearest castle wall. Detaching one hand from Hermione's body, he tapped his wand against the grey stone and suddenly there was the opening in Hogwart's foundation wall again through which they had stepped before.

Severus didn't turn around to them as he hurried through the secret passage, opened the other end of the secret tunnel and stepped into the dusty storage room.

"Open the passageway," Severus ordered and Dumbledore hastily stepped forward, murmuring his password and fixing his eyes and hands on the correct spots. Severus moved on as soon as the golden glow activated the tapestry.

They were greeted with shocked outcries and gasps from the rest of the Order and the sight of a bed, transfigured by Molly Weasley, who hadn't had seven children for nothing. Although tears were streaming down her face when she got sight of Hermione, her voice was steady as she asked for instruction.

"Water," Severus told her as he softly placed Hermione on the bed and immediately applied a diagnosis spell.

What he saw didn't seem to relieve him in the least, and Harry could hear a half muffled moaning from Mrs Weasley.

"Let me take care of the broken arm, Severus," She offered. "I healed those more than once."

And again they set to the hasty work of saving Hermione's life, Professor McGonagall with thin lips and narrowed eyes, Severus with the steady, efficient movements of a robot and Mrs Weasley while muttering "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, my dear," over and over again.

Draco stood to the foot of the bed, holding the bag open as if his life depended on it, his hands trembling slightly and his face a ghostly white.

"She is stabilized," Severus finally announced with a voice of frozen tears. "I need more potions from my office to help her heal internally. Take care of her, Minerva."

With a sigh he hadn't known was coming, Harry leaned against the wall, sliding downwards as his suddenly weak legs gave way. He watched Draco carefully setting the emergency bag on the ground and joining him a minute later, his hands trembling violently now that his task was finished.

"I thought she would die," He whispered, and Harry, unable to open his mouth and form words, nodded silently. "I thought no one could survive such blood loss."

"It's a good thing Severus knows so much about healing," Remus breathed. He was standing to their left, by one of the fireplaces, and it looked as if only sheer will kept him upright. "I never knew¥…"

A sudden, ghastly sound interrupted him, and it took Harry a moment to realize that it was Hermione's breathing, who had changed from a shallow effort, barely noticeable, to a rasping, choking sound, coming in sobs, unbearable in its painful intensity.

"What is happening with her?" Tonks asked, standing helpless by her side. "I thought she was safe now!"

Hermione's limbs wakened to sudden, jerky movements, her whole body convulsing as if invisible fists were punching her. Harry had seen her like this before, on the night when he had found out, and he had hoped that he would never have to see her like this again.

The choking sound increased, pulsing with her wild movements, until Harry had to push his hands violently against the floor to stop them from covering his ears.

"She's having a seizure," McGonagall cried out, trying to stop her flailing arms and legs. "Remus, help me."

Together they tried to keep her body from thrashing and the tender wounds from breaking open again, but Hermione's body convulsed and she pushed them away with inhuman strength. Suddenly, her back arched up impossibly high, her face lost the last colour and she gave one last, sobbing gasp. Then, she went deadly still.

"We're losing her," McGonagall cried out, and this time, there was real panic in her voice.

One moment Severus had been in his office, collecting potions and bandages, the next second he was by Hermione's side, raising one eye lid and checking her pulse. Even from several feet away, Harry could see with terribly clarity that she wasn't breathing, her skin like marble annd her hair like dead, dry twigs.

"She's fading," He said, and then his anger suddenly seemed to explode. "Hermione," He shouted, his voice sharp like a knife. "Get away from her, Minerva! Hermione, the Gods damn you!"

"Severus, there is nothing we can do," Professor McGonagall whispered, trying to reach out for him, but he shrugged her hand away without even looking at her, all of him concentrated on the lifeless body of his master spy. "Away, I said!"

And he slapped Hermione in the face, hard. Tonks cried out, and Remus rushed over, but a movement of Severus's hand sent him flying backwards and collapsing against the far wall of the room.

He slapped her again. "Get a grip on yourself, woman," He shouted, no, howled at her, his anger as terrible as a sudden storm building over the sea. "This is just a scratch! Are you such a coward that you give up like that? Hermione Granger, listen to me, god damn you!" Another slap.

"Severus, I really don't think…" Dumbledore said, helplessly staring at his Spymaster that had obviously gone mad with pain.

"Quiet," Severus shouted, and such power was in his voice that the room fell silent completely. "Is this your Gryffindor strength, Hermione? This is nothing! You are weak, pathetic! Open your eyes, gods damn you! Open your bloody eyes or I will rip them from your skull!"

Nothing but silence in the room, the laboured breathing of Severus and the muffled sobs of Mrs Weasley and Tonks.

Then, when Harry had already started to turn away in defeat, a tired voice, raspy and hoarse, made him whirl around.

"Fuck you, Severus," Hermione whispered, and cracked her eyes open in a silent show of unbelievable strength.

Severus smiled, his anger melting away from him like snow in a fire. "I knew you were just lazy," He told her quietly, and softly caressed her face with his thumb.

"You are a monster," She answered, still barely audible. "I was never…" Her words ended in a coughing fit that racked her thin body like a leaf.

"Quiet," Severus ordered her. "Relax and let me heal you. You look as if someone slapped you in the face repeatedly."

"Bastard," She mouthed, then closed her eyes again, to his tender smile.

"Sleep," He whispered. "I will be right here, I promise. I love you."

He didn't look up to them as he healed her once more, for reasons unknown leaving out the bruises on her face and the scratches on her hands, and administered several potions and salves in quick succession. He washed her hands, face and throat carefully and softly brushed her hair back from her face, then transfigured her torn robes into wide, comfortable trousers and a shirt and covered her with a blanket Molly handed him quietly. Only then did he rise from her side, not without placing a monitoring charm on her.

"Severus," Dumbledore finally said, unsure what to say.

The intensity of his burning black eyes shocked them all.

"I know what is best for her, Albus, and no one will stop me from doing it," He announced, his head raised defiantly. "Not even you."

When no protests came forward, he sighed and only now could Harry see how tired he was. "I need to sit down," He admitted.

"Certainly," The Headmaster agreed hastily. "Let us return to the table, that is if you don't want to stay with Miss Granger…"

Severus shook his head. "She needs to sleep now," he explained hoarsely. "Once she wakes, she will be fine again."

"I find it hard to believe that she will ever be fine again, after what we just witnessed," Molly Weasley said as they crossed over to the huge oval table, Severus moving like an old man and Remus painfully rubbing his back.

"It was a close call," Severus answered quietly, and Harry realized that he had never seen him that exhausted before. He felt drained, too, but he had never seen his Potions Professor so out of control that his perfect masks slipped. "But this was only a physical attack. We had worse before."

Lucius Malfoy hadn't been present, Harry remembered. What had Severus said? That they still respected Malfoy's possession of her body? He shuddered.

Remus sat down gingerly, and Severus suddenly looked up to him, his face twisted into a slightly embarrassed grimace.

"I'm sorry, Remus," He apologized. "I didn't mean to hurt you. I get a bit… single minded when she is in danger, and time was short."

"You were brilliant," Remus disagreed. "I didn't understand what you were doing, and why. I only saw you slapping her and reacted. I was so sure we had lost her."

"I know," Severus answered, misleadingly calm, but Harry could see how tightly he gripped the edge of the table as the realization hit how close she had been to death. "But Hermione is stronger than that. She will be back on her feet in no time at all. They just caught her unaware."

"Do you know what happened, then?" Dumbledore inquired carefully.

"Yes. She showed it to me," Severus said and closed his eyes for a moment, a muscle in his cheek twitching wildly. He took a deep breath and suddenly sat straight again. Harry was amazed to see how he regained his composure in the time it took him to breathe in and out. Every emotion left him, colour returned to his face and when he opened his eyes again, he was the Spymaster they all knew, calm, controlled and untouchable.

"It was a plot," He reported, his voice regaining its rich, self-assured quality while he spoke. "A plot by some of the Inner Circle members against her. They have been jealous of her influence for a long time now, and it seems that one of them was finally stupid enough to act."

"It didn't seem stupid to me," Harry disagreed quietly. "It rather looked as if they did a thorough job."

"They failed completely," Severus answered expressionlessly. "For she got away alive. They attacked her immediately when she appeared, placing anti-apparitions wards around the clearing, but they couldn't resist a little torture before finishing her off. Those imbeciles. Their plan must have been to finally kill her and hide her body. Now that she escaped however," He suddenly smiled, a dark and bitter smile that held not the slightest amusement. "Now, they are in deep trouble."

"You know that you can't move against them, Severus," Remus protested, surprised that their Spymaster would even consider revenge. "We can't risk to betray her position."

"Oh, but I won't move a finger," Severus retorted, still smiling dangerously. "Didn't you hear Hermione, out there, before she collapsed? She will hunt down every single one of them, and then she will destroy them. If I am not very mistaken, they won't survive the month."

He chuckled as he saw the shocked expression on the faces around him. "She can be quite single-minded, too."

Not knowing how to react to this, it took the Order a moment to regain their composure.

"So they didn't act under the command of Voldemort?" Professor McGonagall asked finally.

"On the contrary," Severus answered. "Hermione has been rising swiftly among their ranks. She is very close to the Dark Lord now, and while that gives her protection in many ways, it also causes hate, envy and fear. She holds power among those pureblood men, and they hate her for it. Once the Dark Lord finds out about this attack, his wrath will be terrible." And he smiled again, clearly enjoying the thought.

"How did she get away?" Draco asked quietly.

"That part of her memory is a bit hazy," Severus admitted, frowning. "As far as I can interpret it, she stabbed the two that were holding her, managed to crawl to the edge of the wards and apparated away."

"She stabbed them? I n her state?" Tonks gasped.

Severus just shrugged in reply. "It was that or die," He commented calmly. "And her left arm was fully functional, after all. She even managed to grab her wand before she fled."

"Her left arm was fully functional…" Tonks echoed, obviously not believing what she had heard.

Severus shrugged again. "She once managed to reach my chambers while suffering from internal bleeding that would have killed an elephant," He said, and now Harry was sure that his calmness was just a façade. Under normal circumstances, he would never have let information like that slip.

"But she's quite safe now?" Draco suddenly asked, his voice pressed and nervous and higher than normal. "You're sure about that?"

"I will keep watch over her until she wakes," Severus answered quietly. "But unless there's another seizure, she should wake in a few hours and be fine."

"I…" Mrs Weasley began, obviously unsure how to phrase her words, and Harry closed his eyes, desperately hoping that tonight's event had helped her realize a few things. Obviously, they had.

"You took better car e of her than anyone else could have managed," Mrs Weasley said quietly. "It seems that you really know what is best for her, Severus. I'm sorry."

Their Spymaster simply nodded instead of an answer, too tired to rub it in.

"Can we wait here until she wakes?" Draco asked.

Dumbledore waited for Severus' nod, and when it came, a tentative smile bloomed on his face.

"An excellent idea, my dear boy. I seem to recall that Remus was interrupted in his report rather abruptly. If you wouldn't mind continuing it now…"

Remus sent him a disbelieving look, clearly asking himself how the Headmaster could even think about werewolf clan structure right now, but Dumbledore sent a long look in the direction of their Spymaster, and Remus understood.

Severus had closed his eyes again, his hands grubbing the mug of tea he had conjured himself so hard that his knuckles shone white. He wasn't fit to talk, but he wouldn't admit a weakness to them, either. This way, he could silently regain his strength while they all pretended they were engrossed in a discussion.

Once more, Harry wondered if Dumbledore hadn't been a Slytherin, back in his youth.

Thus began the longest and least efficient Order meeting Harry had ever witnessed. After Remus had finished a rather long winded and insubstantial report, Bill continued by repeating a long lecture Charley had given him about dragon taming. Draco added a detailed description of pureblood customs centred around Halloween, sending covert looks at Severus now and then.

They were all relieved when they saw colour return to his cheeks, and when he uttered his first scornful remark about the uselessness of Drac's information, they knew that he had recovered from the shock.

It was ten o'clock when Severus asked about any progress concerning the ball and the information they had so far gathered on Dougall.

"Is there anything we could do…" He said, then stopped abruptly and tilted his head to the left a bit. "Can you walk?" He then asked, and most of the Order stared at him in confusion.

"Think so," The tired voice of Hermione answered and Harry realized that the sharp ears of the Spymaster had registered the sounds of her waking up. He twisted around and saw her slowly moving into a sitting position.

"Try it," Severus said and rose swiftly. "If you manage, there is warm tea waiting for you here."

"Brilliant," She answered and stood, only to stumble slightly and stretch out her hand for support. Severus was by her side and supporting her in the blink of an eye. How could he move so fast without making a sound, Harry wondered quietly.

"How do you feel?" The Spymaster's deep, rich voice asked, and she snorted slightly.

"As if I was slapped in the face repeatedly," She answered, but her hand reached out to his cheek and touched him softly, only for a second. Harry could see how some of the stiffness vanished from Severus's shoulders in answer.

"Sorry about that," He replied lightly. "But you just wouldn't hear."

"You are lucky that I'm as weak as a kitten, mister," She growled, but a smile tugged at her lips and she leaned into his touch when he helped her sit down. "Otherwise I'd repay you fully for that."

"Another time, dearest," He smiled and poured her tea. She took the cups in her hands as if to seek warmth from it, then sighed and looked up to the men and women around her.

"You look terrible, all of you," She told them. "I gather it was an impressive show then."

"Especially the part when you nearly died on us," Draco said and impulsively reached out to touch her hand.

"Oh, stop fussing," She told him crossly, but her eyes were soft as she looked at him. "It wasn't such a big thing. I was stupid, I paid for it, now I'm fine again. Nothing to worry about."

Harry wanted to tell her that, quite on the contrary, it had been a huge thing, watching her bleeding to death. But something in her eye told him that she didn't want to discuss it. And wasn't she right, in a way? As long as they couldn't change what had happened or stop the danger she was in every single day, what was the use of brooding over the events of the evening?

"How many got away?" Severus asked, no emotion touching his face, but Harry could see that his eyes were fixed on her and her alone.

"Six I think," She answered with a sigh. "I killed two before they got hold of me and stabbed another pair, as you probably saw in the memories I sent you." She stopped for a moment. "I'm sorry about that," She then whispered. "I know that must have been terrible. I just didn't have another idea how to tell you."

"Don't be foolish," He answered quietly. "Do you know their identities? I saw only two faces and I didn't know those men. My knowledge is getting slightly outdated."

"Yes," She said and for a moment, she bared her teeth in a silent snarl. "I know who they are." She looked even more dangerous than Severus had.

"They were quite thorough in their attempt," He told her, and she chuckled as if appreciating a sarcastic joke.

"Any long term damage?" She then asked, and Harry couldn't believe that she was able to talk about her own body that clinically, that detached.

"None I could find," Severus answered, and silence once more descended on them while Hermione finished her tea.

"My dear," The Headmaster finally made himself heard. "I can only imagine how tired you are, and it is quite late already…"

"Yes Headmaster," She agreed. "You're absolutely right. I should go now."

Something was strange in the way she said this words, and Harry quickly glanced over to Severus. The Spymaster had closed his eyes, and the muscle in his cheek was twitching again.

"I'm not sure this is wise, Hermione," He said.

"It is necessary," She disagreed.

"But you _are _tired, and you have made mistakes before when you were in this state of mind. Don't you think…"

"I have decided," She said sharply, then her face softened and she rose, suppressing a gasp of pain, and walked over to Severus's chair.

"I'm sorry," She told him, resting a hand on his shoulder for a moment. "But it must be done."

"Just a moment," Harry interrupted, a shudder of realization rushing through him. "You are not going to your rooms, are you? What are you planning?"

She looked at him unwillingly, reproachfully for bringing this up, and slightly shook her head.

"You are not leaving before you tell me!" Harry said. "Where are you going?"

She sighed. "To Voldemort, Harry," She answered quietly. "He has to see me as long as my energy levels are low and the bruises of my face not healed. I must go to him tonight if I want to play my cards to best advantage."

"You are going to Voldemort?" Remus asked, clearly horrified. "Tonight? After what just happened to you?"

She smiled. "Don't you know what they are saying about riding, Remus?" She asked. "When you take a fall, it is best to remount the horse immediately."

"No," Draco stood suddenly, not noticing that he overturned his chair in the process. "This is not a game of cards we are talking about, this is your life! You will not go back while you are too weak to protect yourself – that would be madness!"

"But that's the point," Hermione explained calmly. "If I look weak enough to coax him into protecting me, I have won! I won't even have to kill those six men myself – he will do it for me! Can you imagine what consequences this will have? The Dark Lord punishing his Inner Circle for hurting a mudblood? His followers will start to question him!"

"Or, if your luck runs out," Draco protested. "You could be killed off by anybody on your way there. You might not even be able to approach the Dark Lord!"

"I must agree, Hermione," Remus now said, his voice steady but with an edge to it. "Going there now is madness."

"But don't you see that this is the best thing that could have happened?" She answered angrily. "It will take only a little more effort from my side and I can use this attack to secure my position among them for the next months! This is exactly what we need to give me the necessary trust and power! He will believe anything I say now, and nothing the other Death Eaters might say against me!"

"You were nearly killed!" Harry was shouting now, but he didn't care. "You were only inches from death! And now you're telling us this is the best what could have happened? That's twisted, Hermione! And it's even more twisted to go into danger again, just because you still have some bruises to show off… bruises…" He faltered and fell silent.

In his mind, the memory of Severus healing Hermione was being replayed, how the Spymaster had healed everything, had even washed her face, only leaving out the wounds that were easily visible for some unknown reason…

He whirled around and stared at Severus. "You knew she would go back! That's why you didn't heal the bruises on her face and hands!" He accused him, and Severus made no move to deny it.

"Excellent perception, Harry," He said quietly. "You are learning fast."

"But why?"

"Because I would have returned tonight as well," Severus answered.

"How could you think of that, when you had just seen her nearly die under your hands?" Remus cried out. "How can you simply let her go like this? What sort of man are you, Severus?"

Only now, when the Order seemed ready to round on Severus, did Hermione raise her voice in anger.

"Don't you dare blame this on Severus!" She yelled, straightening imperiously as she prepared to give them all a tongue-lashing. "It is my decision! And the fact that he supports me shows only how much he respects my competence, damn you! I can't believe…"

"Hermione," Severus interrupted calmly. "Concentrate on the important things."

"I do," She shouted. "You are important! I will not have them heap guilt on your shoulders when you're near the breaking point already! You mustn't…"

Suddenly she swayed and closed her eyes in a sudden fit of pain. Blindly, she grasped for the edge of her chair or anything that would support her, but she would have fallen, had Severus not been by her side in an instant.

"That's what I meant," He told her quietly while guiding her hands to the polished wood of the table. "You have little strength left as it is. Don't waste it foolishly. Keep your eyes closed for a moment."

And with that, he left her standing among them, swaying slightly with exhaustion and pain, her only protection from a bad fall the edge of the table to which she held on with her life.

"Here," He reappeared behind her before anyone else could react, and pressed a vial into her hand. He carefully straightened her and let her lean against his shoulders.

"Do you want to lie down for a moment?"

"I would never get up again," She whispered tiredly. "Thank you." She uncorked the potion and downed it quickly.

"Eight hours," He told her. "You had better be flat on your back by then. You will feel terrible anyway."

"Nothing new then," She croaked, and slowly opened her eyes again. When she had assured herself that the room wasn't spinning around her any longer, she looked up to him for a long moment, her brown eyes dark and seemingly expressionless.

Then, she nodded, and he led her over to one of the tapestries. It was the one that connected to the unused storeroom, down in the dungeons. Harry recognized it from its especially shabby looks.

She still moved like an old woman, but when she activated he tapestry, her fingers were swift and her eyes didn't waver. While the golden glow grew, she turned around and melted into Severus' arms. He pressed her tightly for a moment, his face grey with worry and exhaustion.

"Come back to me," He whispered.

"I will," She promised, her voice steadier than her hands. Then she slowly moved away from him, breaking the contact reluctantly. When she looked back to where they sat, her eyes were expressionless and cold, as if her mind was already preparing for the things she would have to do.

"A good hunt," Severus wished her. "And kick them for me."

She nodded and stepped through the tapestry.

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A/N: Hoped you like it! Please drop me a review to comment/praise/criticise! Your input really means much to me!


	54. In Awe And Fear

A/N: Folks, I'm so excited! I've received a nomination for this fic, for best drama fiction at "The Goblets". The voting begins at October 13th, so if you think this fic is worth winning, go and click the button for my name! The addresses are: www. stellanima .com/ The (underscore ) Goblets, or their yahoogroup "the (underscore) goblets". You can also access the links via my lifejournal!

And once again: Let me remind you of my lj (lioness-kayly at lifejournal .com)! Many questions you asked in your reviews are pondered there, as well as fanart!

Now, on to the show! The first part of this chapter is especially for the people who requested another meeeting with Voldemort – I hope it won't disappoint…

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**In Awe And Fear**

_Don't faint before you have even left the school!_ Hermione told herself sternly as she walked, or rather stumbled, through the dark tunnels deep down in the bowels of the castle. Severus or any Order member would have probably accompanied her willingly to the apparition point, but she needed the time alone both to plan a strategy and construct a credible set of memories in her mind.

Voldemort would be very interested indeed.

The first part was easy, certainly easier than navigating Hogwarts' ground with a mind half turned inwards and a body half dead with exhaustion. Only the very potent pepper-up potion Severus had administered kept her upright and thinking, but by the time she had reached the hollow tree where her invisibility cloak would be hidden away, she had added a believable end to the sequence of memories.

Stepping beyond the wards of the school, she took a deep breath and apparated away.

It wasn't hard to let her steps and movement lack the grace she usually sported in the halls of Voldemort's Headquarters. Passing Death Eaters sent wondering looks after her, both irritated by her seemingly drunken behaviour and the state of her hair and face. She had checked her appearance with a conjured mirror, down by the tree, and had added another set of nasty bruises and a bit of dirt for good measure.

The closer she came to Voldemort's throne room the more crowded the subterraneous tunnels became. There wasn't a regular Inner or Outer Circle meeting tonight, but an increasing number of Death Eaters preferred living in Voldemort's dark fortress to the outside world. Over the last months, Severus and she had worked on exposing as many of them as they could without risking Hermione's position. They had thought about killing them, of course, but while they could claim the knowledge of their identities to Severus' memory or unknown sources, their concrete whereabouts were a bit more difficult to determine, and knowledge of them screamed "spy" all over.

Once a Death Eater's identity was openly announced or indirectly handed to the papers – Hermione had never completely given up her hold on that Skeeter woman -, his or her possessions would be confiscated, their name and face published throughout Britain. A comfortable, pureblood life would quite suddenly turn into a twentyfour-hour hunt, with the former hunter as the nation's prey.

Once even the last family member or friend had withdrawn his support – and they usually did so quickly enough these days – life here became increasingly more attractive. Living in an underground fortress with a mad Lord seemed a small price for eight hours undisturbed sleep per night.

Hermione had her own room too, of course, as all full members of the Inner Circle did, but she only used it to store a few spare clothes and robes in it, or to occasionally rest a bit when a revel had been too taxing for her to apparate right away. But usually she restricted her visits here to the possible minimum.

Hermione was just glad that school gave her a valid excuse to stay away from that boys' camp for most of the day.

_I'm among boys, and I'm going to steal their favourite toy_, She thought as she felt the Death Eater's eyes on her, some of them openly leering, some of the irritated. A few acknowledged her with nods or slight bows, but she noticed that they didn't behave as respectful as they had two nights ago. In their eyes, her state of obvious exhaustion made her weak, an easy prey for Voldemort's anger, and they didn't want to be seen supporting the mudblood just in case her short career among them ended tonight.

They should know that Death Eaters had excellent memories, though. If she ever fell from Voldemort's grace, her known supporters would find themselves without power within the week.

But that wouldn't happen tonight. Tonight she would gamble, and act, and win. After tonight, her power would be undebated among the Death Eaters, and with a little bit of luck, small questions would start to worm their way into their minds, questions as to why the Dark Lord protected a mudblood from the purebloods of his circle.

Small questions could bring a mountain down.

She reached the large iron doors to the throne room, decorated with snakes of all things – concerning interior design, Voldemort most certainly lacked style – and threw them open. The movement carried her into the room on unsteady feet, and when she felt her legs give way she followed them, dropping to the stone floor in an ungraceful heap of clothes, limbs and hair.

Almost immediately, the attention of the room turned on her.

Normally, she would have remained in the shadows a bit longer, watching and memorizing new Death Eaters, scanning the groups for newly forming alliances or for freshly ended ones, observing the room's hierarchy and listening in on conversations. But tonight, the stage was hers.

"Forgive me, my Lord," She wailed, loud enough to end even the last conversation. Quickly, knowing well enough that their Lord didn't like to wait, the Death Eaters cleared a path between her and the throne. She could feel his red, evil eyes on her broken form, and she welcomed them in.

"Such an interruption is indeed hard to forgive, mudblood. What is it?"

_As if you had anything better to do with your evening_, she thought in a detached corner of her mind, while her consciousness lifted her face to his eyes and a trembling spread through her body.

"Forgive me for my cowardice, my Lord. I have come to accept my punishment. This life of mine is yours my Lord, if you wish to claim it."

This was the trickiest part of her plan. If his mood was bad enough, he wouldn't wait to ask questions. He would simply punish her now, and she wasn't entirely sure if she would survive another round of curses at the moment.

But it seemed that her luck hadn't run out. Voldemort frowned, an almost comical expression on his alien face, and stretched out a long, white arm to beckon her to him.

"Come here, Hermione," He ordered, and she crawled across the floor towards him, painfully eager but painfully slow. Only part of it was an act. She had been right when she had told Severus that she wouldn't be able to get up again. Now that her body had made contact with the floor, it refused to keep going, but she simply transferred that conflict to her outer appearance.

She could see Lucius, who was standing at the side of his Lord as usual, move his eyes away from her in disgust. She looked awful, then. Very good.

"Forgive me, my Lord, I failed you! Take my life and thus my guilt away," She allowed herself to babble along the well cleared path of her Death Eater persona and added a little trembling to her lips. Voldemort wasn't the type for puppy dog eyes, but honest desperation and fear always worked quite well for him.

_You just have to know what a man wants_.

Babbling and sobbing, she wondered when he would have enough and ask her outright. He hated it to admit ignorance, but this would only work to her satisfaction if he took the initiative from step one.

_Not much longer_, She thought, and as if confirming her, she could hear his cold voice above her head.

"You are overtaxing my patience, mudblood," He hissed. "Look into my eyes and tell me what you are talking about."

Her head shot up as if from a slap and murmurs started among the Death Eaters. The extra mud and bruises had been a good idea, it seemed.

"But…" She stammered, astonishment widening her eyes. "About the men you sent to kill me, Bolstring and Karsev and the others. Forgive me for disappointing you once more, my Lord!"

The force of his entry into her mind knocked her head back and she was lying on the floor again, her feet sprawled in front of her, her nose bleeding from the pressure inside her head. He was ruthless, not bothering with the slightest gentleness as he took possession of her mind and her memories.

Then, she felt his consciousness freeze inside her, just like a man who had encountered the unexpected. Once more he examined the memory she had constructed less than half an hour ago, carefully and very thoroughly. She could feel his rage inside her well up, heating her skin and blood until she wanted to scream.

He crawled back into his own body. And when she looked up to him, her lips and limbs trembling again, she recoiled in fear. Never had she seen such fury on his face.

"I didn't send these men. They were acting against my wishes and my orders," He whispered. He didn't need a spell to carry his voice through the room.

She gave a little whimper of relief and abruptly slackened her facial expression. To those watching her, it must have looked as if she had de-aged in seconds, turning into the harmless, helpless, very small school girl that had worked so well with Fudge and countless others.

"Then you aren't disappointed in me, my Lord?" She whispered. "You didn't want to take my life as punishment?"

"No. I didn't." The air chilled with his wrath and she whimpered again, though of course she knew it wasn't directed at her. "Come here, pet."

Awkwardly, she crawled forward, up the steps of the throne. He stretched out a hand and rested it on her head.

"I am proud of you, Hermione. You defended yourself with the viciousness of a true Death Eater, and although you expected to die tonight, you returned to do my bidding. That is true courage, and true loyalty."

_He treats me like a child_, She realized at his fatherly, unusually warm tone. _He tries to console me, to make me feel safe. Let's see if we can coax him a step further._

She sobbed, loudly, as if his words had robbed her of the last self control, and pressed her head against his hand, her body against his leg, like a small dog that had been hurt by others.

And the unimaginable happened.

Voldemort, Dark Lord and mudblood hater, killer of thousands, lifted the hem of his cloak and draped it around her, a sign of protection to the world.

She made herself small, as small as a child, until only her head with his claws still resting on it protruded from the dark robes. She opened her eyes to an ocean of shocked faces.

"Bolstring, Deanston, Mulhannon. Step forward," Voldemort commanded, his tone cold again, but Hermione could feel his hand caressing her hair. With all her power, she imagined Severus sitting besides her, and the thought gave her strength enough to press herself even tighter against his leg. Slowly, she let the trembling of her limbs subside, as if his presence had calmed her.

"Lucius," He said. "Get me Karsev, Askaron and Melling. Get them now, and be careful not to let them escape."

Lucius bowed without a word, although the expression on his face practically screamed curiosity, and stepped away from the throne.

"My pensieve, Darren," The Dark Lord ordered, and another man in black robes vanished from the circle gazing up at them. The crowd parted for Bolstring, then for Deanston and Mulhannon, and Hermione increased the trembling of her limbs again, as if the sight of her torturers frightened her senseless.

Voldemort observed the three men with silent, cold eyes, no doubt raving through their brains in search for motives, signs of betrayal or of weakness. He would probably find loads, Hermione thought angrily. Men stupid enough to brag and play before the kill were also stupid enough to criticise their Lord among each other.

Darren returned in less than five minutes, though it seemed like an eternity for the group assembled in the throne room, the pensieve floating behind him. Only when he had carefully positioned it on a pedestal in front of Voldemort's throne did the Dark Lord straighten and speak.

"This afternoon has seen the disturbance of my will and plans in a most crucial way, a fact that is only worsened by the identities of those who defied me."

Silence. Hermione could see Mulhannon shiver slightly, obviously knowing what would come and yet unable to think of a safe way out. Not surprising, since there _was_ no way out at this point. None of the men would survive this night, and from her position near Voldemort's knee, Hermione could see that knowledge on the men's faces.

It filled her with a bone-deep satisfaction.

"Mulhannon. Bolstring. Deanston," Voldemort paused, and suddenly the throne room's door opened, displaying Lucius Malfoy with the other three men on their way in. Voldemort must have sensed Lucius coming, Hermione thought, otherwise the timing couldn't have been that perfect. But it certainly produced the desired effect.

"Karsev. Askaron. Melling," He paused again to let his cold gaze travel over their faces, and now Mulhannon wasn't the only one shivering. "I would ask you to explain yourselves, had I not already seen your souls and the weakness that corrupts them. But although I have seen and judged, I deem it wise to let my true followers see your treachery."

With that, he lifted his wand to his temple and withdrew a long, silvery string of memories that he commanded into the pensieve. He flicked his wand again, and the ghostly figures of ten Death Eaters arose, the six condemned men among them, waiting silently on a small clearing.

Suddenly, with a plop, Hermione appeared among them, wearing the robes customary for a Death Eater meeting. The expression on her face when she saw herself surrounded by the men was utterly dumbfounded.

_So that's how I look when I'm surprised,_ She thought as she watched herself kill two of them with a feral snarl before the one behind her aimed a vicious curse at her unprotected back and Karsev kicked her wand out of her hand. _One good reason more never to be surprised, then._

Hermione winced as she witnessed a nasty punch shattering her cheekbone. From outside the attack looked even worse than it had felt, especially now that adrenaline and fear didn't dim her pain perception any longer. She hadn't realized that their systematic destroying of her body had taken that long, either. Minutes had been seconds to her, it seemed, until she had finally found a way to escape.

She couldn't help but feel proud as she watched herself stretch out her left, uninjured arm and let loose two killing curses in quick succession, finishing off the two men that had pinned her to the ground. She robbed backwards, her eyes on the other attackers, who seemed shocked into inaction for a moment. Before they could gather their wits and come for her once more, she had reached the edge of the anti-apparition wards, carelessly close to the place where they had captured her, and apparated away.

She expected the ghostly images to end then, but obviously Voldemort had decided to show his Death Eaters how she had managed to survive after an attack of such magnitude. Perhaps it was a silent way of praising her.

Not that she needed further praising after his display tonight.

But still she could see awe on the faces of the Death Eaters as they watched her apparate to the edge of Hogwarts' wards – not her real apparition point, of course, she wouldn't give that up to potential enemies – and down potion after potion from her hidden supply.

Awe, battling with fear as they saw her ruthlessly righting her broken arm and heal herself while blood poured from her wounds and sullied the ground. Hermione swallowed. She had assembled that scene from old memories, memories taken from the dark time before Severus had decided to help her, and the fierce determination on her younger self's face frightened even herself. Only now could she see how Severus had mellowed her mind, how he had turned her from becoming bitter and hard back to living as a human being. Suddenly, she was filled with a love so profound that she hid her face in Voldemort's cloak, worrying that the emotion could be detected on her face despite her thick Occlumency shields.

She missed the memory of her fainting and lying in a crumpled, bloody heap at the foot of a tree, before awaking again after some time – Voldemort had obviously sped that part up, or they would be watching for hours -, cleaning and finish healing herself and apparating back to his fortress, on her face the willingness to accept whatever punishment he would deal out for her.

"All this," Voldemort said coldly when the memory had finally ended. "All this after I explicitly commanded that Hermione wasn't to be hurt. You disobeyed me. You sowed discord among this group. You attacked a fellow Death Eater, one that stood far above you in my favour."

This time, she could see reactions not only on the faces of the six condemned men. Although anyone able to recognize reality might have seen the way Voldemort had favoured her, their prejudices had kept them from realising that a mudblood had become Queen in their very midst. But they saw it now, and they didn't like it one bit.

"As it is", The Dark Lord continued. "I have decided not to determine your punishment myself. You have sowed discord, and harmony must be restored. Thus I give your lives to Hermione, to judge you as she wishes."

Hermione wondered if he could not see the shock that spread through the room at his words, or if he saw it and could ignore what it meant for his command. He was going beyond whatever she had hoped for this evening, handing out power to her of a magnitude that surpassed even Lucius'. He gave her power over men under his own command. He offered her the lives of purebloods.

For a second, she was severely tempted to accept the offer.

But then political instincts slammed back in and she shook her head in a meek gesture, glanced up to him with a face that glowed with love and fanatism.

"You overwhelm me, my Lord," She whispered. "But I would forget my place if I accepted that gift. They may have hurt me, my Lord, but they also defied your will. In comparison, the offence against me is small."

She could see that he liked her answer, although he normally expected his minions to joyfully accept the gifts he so rarely gave. But with this, it was important to show him that thoughts of her own grandeur and power wouldn't turn her head. That he was still, first and foremost, her Lord and she his servant.

"Their death it is, then," He announced lazily, and the group of Death Eaters winced as one, as if they hadn't really believed till the end that he would kill six of them for their offence against a mudblood.

"Crucio."

Hermione watched them twitch and writhe on the ground under a variety of pain spells without the slightest spark of compassion. This was what stupidity earned you in the world of darkness and shadow. She had walked through fire and pain to reach the position at Voldemort's knees, and she had emerged triumphant. How could she pity the purebloods that had established this game of fear and cruelty in the first place, just because she played the game better than they could ever hope?

It was over surprisingly quick. Obviously, Voldemort's anger had outweighed his wish to inflict pain this time, and as Hermione looked down to the mangled bodies at her feet, she had to admit she was glad. She was relieved they were gone, and satisfied that she had taken revenge, but nobody deserved being tortured for hours.

She was still resting against Voldemort's knees, and the Dark Lord hadn't removed his hand from her head as he punished her attackers. Now, he looked down at her with a generous expression.

"Now that justice has been done," He said. "You had better return to the school. You need to rest, and we don't want Potter to wonder what happened to you, do we?"

"No, my Lord," She whispered, ever the compliant mudblood. "Thank you for your generosity."

"It is nothing," He answered in a tone that approached kindness. "Leave now."

She loosened her grip on his knee and crawled away from him, slowly standing when she had nearly left the throne room. It was crucial to show no arrogance at this point, no pride, or the purebloods would crush down on her like a horde of furies.

Her mind was surrounded by a tired haze as she walked towards the apparition point, but it was satisfaction that made her limbs heavy. She had nearly reached the entrance to the strongly warded and guarded room when she could feel a presence behind her. And from the sound of the steps and the hint of perfume that reached her nose, it wasn't just any presence.

"Lucius," She greeted him quietly, slowing her steps so that he could catch up with her, but what she really wanted to say was _Not now!_

"Hermione," He answered gravely, taking her elbow and carefully leading her on. "Are you well enough to apparate on your own?"

Behind her occlumency shields, she was startled. She hadn't expected that question, rather a command to follow him to his rooms or somewhere worse.

"Yes, thank you," She answered quietly. "I should manage."

"All I wanted to tell you, Hermione," He continued after a moment's pause. "Is that whenever something like this happens again, and you need help, you may come to me, whatever the case."

This time, she allowed her impulse to move her head up to him in surprise, meeting his eyes and observing closely what she saw in his face.

She saw obsession, and worry, and a feeling that made her shudder and writhe on the inside. For all her experience with Lucius' strange moods, she would never have expected him to feel tenderness for her.

But then she thought about Severus, and how he had carried her in his arms that night, and when she looked at him again, her eyes showed nothing but love and gratitude.

"Thank you," She whispered. "What would I do without you." _So I do control you after all, Lucius. Let us see how we can use that. _

She embraced him for a moment, not sure how to handle a tender Lucius, then stepped away with a small nod and into the apparition room. His eyes were locked with hers until she vanished with a plop.

Her apparition and the trip up to the castle happened in a rush of triumph, carrying her straight and fast despite her exhaustion. It only faded when she stepped through the tapestry. But that was where Severus would be waiting for her, and he would protect her now. She could let go of her strength, finally.

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His arms caught her when she had barely stumbled through the tapestry. He cradled her in his arms carefully, refusing to give in to the relief crushing over him like a flood, bringing exhaustion and tiredness in its wake. First he had to get her to safety, and to make sure that nothing bad had happened while she was away again.

His eyes scanned her face and body, intently searching for signs of injuries, and his ears took up what she whispered to them before she closed her eyes and seemed to go to sleep, recording it to be recalled later, but all his consciousness was centred on her warm, living, breathing form that he had gathered in the circle of his arms.

Without one look, without one word backwards Severus stepped through the tapestry that connected his room to the Headquarters.

He didn't stop in the library, not bothering to shrug off his outer robes or alert Jane. If Jane had noticed what had happened, she would have been all over the Headquarters already, demanding actions and answers. She probably wouldn't have let Hermione leave again.

When he had reached his bed chamber, he cast a warming charm and readied the blankets with a flick of his wrist. Then, he stopped moving.

He lowered his head to her hair and slowly breathed in her unique scent, not in the least reduced by pain and blood and the many cleaning spells.

She was back. Back in the realm of his responsibility. He could keep her safe now. And he would.

"Severus," Hermione's tired voice could be heard after a moment. "You can let me down now. No need to carry me for the rest of the night."

He nodded, forgetting that she wouldn't be able to see the gesture in the darkness of his chambers, but somehow his body must have communicated the gesture to her and she reached up, softly touching his cheek, caressing it with less than steady fingers.

"I'm back," She whispered, as if she knew exactly what he was feeling right now. She probably did.

"I am safe for tonight, Severus. You honoured your promise, and now I will honour mine by allowing you to heal me, and by resting." She chuckled, and even though the sound was hoarse and tired, he could detect her wonderful, warm voice under the layers of weariness. "But to let me do that you will have to lay me on the bed, you know?"

"Yes," He answered, the pain in his voice mirrored hers. But still he didn't move until she tugged gently at his arm, telling him silently to let her go. Only then did he let her down on the bed.

"Do you want to take a shower?" He asked.

"I couldn't stay on my feet long enough," She answered quietly, taking hold of his hand. "But I do wish to be clean… Severus… would you wash me again, like you did on Christmas?"

One corner of his mind knew what she was doing as he nodded and summoned the sponge and a basin filled with hot water. She had overcome her shock quickly enough. As mad as it had sounded, he had told the Order nothing but the truth when he had dismissed the attack as "only physical". Pain and fear couldn't crush her any longer. She would have nightmares, but in her mind the evening had turned into a triumph, a wild hunt after her attackers that had left her victorious. Painful as it had been, the reward had been greater.

She knew that the main prize had been paid by him, who wanted to keep her safe and nevertheless had let her go into danger, who loved her and had let her wander among those who hated her while he waited silently in the dark places of his mind.

He could feel his hands trembling slightly as he let the wet sponge slowly glide along her skin. She had closed her eyes in silent enjoyment, showing him her trust and love without overwhelming him.

He had kept his emotions caged for during the whole evening, had kept functioning through everything. Now he could feel the shock settling in, and it was only her light, only her warmth that kept the cold from his limbs.

"I love you, Severus," She whispered. "And I want to fall asleep in your arms, and awake in your arms. For tonight, I want nothing but peace. Nothing but us."

And so he changed them both into night clothes with a murmured spell and slipped into the bed beside her, embracing her and feeling her arms sneak around his waist, embracing him in turn. He rested his chin on her forehead, listened to the little sounds she always made when falling asleep and finally allowed himself to relax in the knowledge that she was here, was safe, was – at least for tonight – his.

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They visited her around midday the next morning. Draco had waited with the others in Headquarters till late after midnight, trying to work on the prophecy with Harry and failing spectacularly while his ears strained for the humming sound the tapestries produced, and his eyes hunted for the golden shine of their magic.

But when it had come, Severus had stood by the magical entrance before Draco had even noticed.

When she had stepped through the tapestry, stumbling, her movements slurred as if every single one of them was an effort too much for her, Severus had caught her and, with one look at her face that seemed decades older and barely human anymore, had swooped her up from her feet and carried her in her arms.

"Bed, now," Was the only thing he said as the others assembled around them in an insecure half circle.

Draco had seen her nod, her eyes already closed and her head slightly lolling to the side as if she was half asleep.

"They are dead. The Dark Lord killed all six in front of me," She had whispered, barely audible.

But before they could ask more, or even wish her a good night, Snape had taken her through the gateway to his chambers, without a look back.

Draco hadn't been sure what to expect when Severus' note finally informed them that she was awake and able to see them – perhaps a tired Hermione nevertheless labouring away on some homework, or an already recovered master spy plotting or working on her fighting technique, but it definitely wasn't this – a very sleepy, very relaxed Hermione that was lying in bed like a six year old waiting for her good night story.

It was a picture difficult to console with the knife-like personality she had displayed the night before, or with the usual Hermione, who always seemed busy and on edge.

"You are so different today," Draco blurted when all she did in greeting was lift her head and smile at them. She didn't even attempt to rise to more than the half sitting position her pillows were formed.

"That's because we have a deal," Hermione answered with a tired little smile. "He doesn't interfere as long as a job isn't done, no matter what he thinks about it, and once I'm back, I let myself be treated like a meek little lamb." She snorted, half irritated, half amused. "He has been fussing over me all morning. I can't even remember how many things I have been spoon-fed. I wouldn't dare move a finger even if I could."

"I'm glad to hear that, for I wouldn't like to tie you to the bed in the least," A crisp little voice announced from behind.

Draco couldn't help himself – he jumped. That house elf of Severus was downright creepy, always appearing when one didn't expect her, always full of good advice and criticism. A house elf had to be silent and obedient and quite stupid. This… Jane just wasn't natural!

"Jane," Harry greeted her quite courteously. He had it easy – she had not only taken a liking to him from the very beginning, he had also been in her favours because of Dobby, who was, by the way, the very same reason why she seemed to despise Draco.

"Mr Potter. It is nice to meet you again. I trust our little heroine here gave you quite the fright yesterday?"

Harry nodded, clearly amused at this description of Hermione, who did nothing but grin amusedly and demand another cup of tea.

"And the Malfoy heir," She greeted Draco with less than enthusiasm.

Draco straightened himself imperiously and gave her _the look_. He had copied it from his father and perfected it by imitating Severus. It made even Mrs Weasley back away. Unfortunately, Jane seemed to be immune.

"No, don't even try that," She said, moving her hand as if he wasn't worth looking at. "I have suffered enough when I watched Severus grow up. Scowling teenagers are an abomination unto nature, I swear."

"Oh Jane, stop it," Hermione groaned from the bed. "It's not his fault that he was educated as a prejudiced Slytherin pureblood."

"Thank you very much," Draco commented dryly. "You do know how to make me feel better, Hermione!"

"You're welcome," She answered pleasantly. "Now tell me, is Mrs Weasley fussing again?"

"On the contrary," Draco chuckled. "She is all concern and apologies now. Obviously she finally realized that there's more to you than meets the eye, and that Snape _really_ knows how to handle the madness that is you."

He ducked expertly as Hermione threw a pillow at him, but it would have gone wide anyway. That fact told him more than anything else how weak she was – normally, Hermione was an expert on throwing things at him. From the worried look he gave her, Harry must have noticed it, too.

"Are you really alright?" He asked hesitatingly. "I don't want to push, but I still don't think it wise that you went back yesterday."

Hermione sighed and sipped at her tea. "Who knows the Dark Lord better, you or I?" She asked dryly.

Harry looked as if he wanted to argue the point, then obviously decided that being tied to a gravestone by someone didn't give you the kind of insight Hermione meant.

"But you weren't safe!"

"Being safe and being a spy exclude each other, Harry," Hermione said, earning a reproachful glare from Jane. She grunted when the house elf abruptly removed a pillow from her back and started to punch it violently.

Inwardly, Draco nodded. The house elf was dangerous, he had always known it. But at least she liked Hermione's attitude as little as he did.

He turned his head around to Harry, signalling with his eyes that he had worried enough for today. He had known Hermione quite some time now and was sure that she wouldn't change her mind on this anyway.

"So, are you up to the meeting tonight?" Harry asked in a less than subtle attempt to turn the topic away from Voldemort's habits.

"Nope," She answered happily. "Severus has announced that he won't let me out of bed till tomorrow. He won't be present, either."

"But don't you have to plan that ball beforehand?" Draco asked. He had been slightly miffed about the fact that he couldn't accompany them. Of course, it would be more than strange for Dumbledore to bring the son of a known Death Eater to such an event, especially as the Boy Who Lived would be reluctantly following the invitation.

He _had_ had his share of fun through critically examining Harry's dress robes and picking them apart with lots of sneering and snobbish commenting, and even more fun when he had taught Harry to dance, mind you, _really_ dance this time, not that disastrous hobbling and stumbling he had displayed during the Yule ball in fourth year.

But he had nevertheless hoped to learn about their plans in advance. He just loved to see Hermione plan, and if he wasn't completely wrong, this would be a night to remember indeed.

"Most of the planning is done," She answered peacefully, her eyes twinkling as if she knew exactly what he was thinking. She probably did. "I only need some details on Dougall's preferences and on the colour patterns of the ball."

"But won't that take time to prepare, too?" Draco whined, knowing that he sounded infantile but not caring. Although she seemed relaxed, he could still see the lines of exhaustion around her eyes and mouth. She needed every happy moment they could give her.

"The uniforms and clothes can be transfigured tomorrow. I _am_ a witch, you know," She smugly answered, reminding him of the way he used to think about muggleborns.

He wrinkled his nose in fake disgust. "Barely," He finally judged and got a bump against his shoulder from Harry in answer.

"That will be a full afternoon, what with us presenting the prophecy's wording as well," Harry commented, and Hermione looked up with sudden curiosity.

"You finished?" She asked. "How did you word the last sentence, then?"

Draco grinned. "That you would like to know," He drawled and shared another amused look with Harry. "But I'm afraid that would fall under the category of work, and as you just told us, you have to relax today. So if you don't mind, we will go down to Severus now, and discuss important business while you stay in bed and drink tea…"

Her outraged face was the last thing he saw before he closed the door behind him with a satisfied grin.

Hermione was safe, Harry was learning to banter eloquently, and tomorrow they would present their first independent project to the Order.

Life was good.

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	55. Twice the Power Must Be Forged

A/N: I am sorry about the delay, people, but life is more than busy at the moments. For update information, previews and reasons why this chapter took me so long, please check my life journal (click on the link "homepage" on my profile page). That is also the place where you can find the link to the yahoogroup "The Goblets", to vote for my fic if you wish to...

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**Twice the Power Must Be Forged**

"Something happened with Hermione?" Fred asked as the twins, Ron, Harry and Draco lounged on the sofas in Headquarters, waiting for the full Saturday meeting to begin. Well, "lounging" fitted only some of them, as Draco sat perfectly straight and Harry was making at least an effort to keep his spine vertical.

At Fred's question, he snapped to attention immediately.

"Why would you think that?" He asked, careful to let neither his surprise nor his worry show. He threw a glance at Hermione, who didn't look unusually tense or exhausted as she stood with Mad-Eye Moody, probably discussing strategy or some aspect of fighting practice. If anything had changed since the last full meeting, it was that she appeared fiercer, more determined and self confident.

"Mother," George answered simply. "The illustrious Mrs Weasley is shooting worried glances at Hermione and apologizing ones at Snape. If there was a kitchen nearby, she would probably have cooked a full meal for them already."

Harry was surprised. He hadn't suspected the twins able of such subtlety. But then he turned his head to where Mrs Weasley hovered anxiously, not quite besides Hermione but never far from her, and decided that he had to rephrase his thought. "Subtlety" would have meant noticing the way Severus' behaviour was alternating from smug, because he had forced her to rest, and overprotective, because he wanted her to rest more. Noticing Mrs Weasley, on the other hand, was simply inevitable.

"_Did_ something happen?" Ron asked again, and Harry glanced at Draco, who blinked an agreement. They would find out anyway, if not during the Order meeting then from their mother and father. Better to tell them now and stop them from confronting Hermione with their knowledge.

"Hermione was ambushed Thursday evening by rogue Death Eaters," He explained, making sure to keep his voice light and neutral. "They beat her within an inch of her life, but she managed to get away by killing the two that held her down. Severus and Professor McGonagall healed her. It was a close call, though."

Harry noticed that Ron was twitching nervously, as he always did when Harry used Severus' name so casually these days.

"When she woke up from that, she went back to Voldemort and tricked him into killing all six attackers."

The twins' jaws had dropped at this explanation.

"Great Merlin," Fred exclaumed and turned around to stare at Hermione. His gesture was painfully obvious but Hermione pretended not to notice. Her eyes seemed to meet Harry's entirely by accident, and the nod that told him she accepted and supported his decision to inform them seemed to be directed at Moody.

"She looks great! There's no way she nearly died on Thursday," George protested now.

"No one heals that quickly. She doesn't even look stressed!"

"She's still standing," Ron, who had gone very pale at the news, murmured quietly. "And she's got Snape."

The twins turned to their younger brother so utterly nonplussed that Draco couldn't suppress an amused snort. Harry decided that he had to rephrase his thoughts, again. It seemed that there was at least one member of the Weasley family who had learned subtlety.

Dumbledore called the beginning of the meeting shortly thereafter, and Harry was glad that the barrel of questions from the twins was ended. Although he knew them to be fierce warriors and magical geniuses, sometimes he couldn't help thinking that they all considered this nothing but one large adventure. He and Ron had done that, too, a few times in the past, but that had ended irreversibly when Cedric had died.

And now that Hermione had entered her two edged game…

"Let me begin this Order meeting," Dumbledore started once they had all taken their seats and quieted down. "By conveying great praise from our fighting instructors," He nodded towards Moody, Severus and Remus. "All of them are more than satisfied with how our plans and preparations are progressing, and wish to congratulate you on your ability and diligence."

Harry found it hard to believe that Severus would congratulate anyone on that, and when he looked over to their Spymaster, he saw a mocking smile play on his lips. Severus must have noticed Harry's eyes on him, for he suddenly met his gaze and the smile widened. Harry frowned. There was something else behind that smile, he was sure…

Dumbledore's next announcement told him exactly what it was that had made Snape grin like a cat after the kill.

"And to further ensure our safety, Severus has graciously agreed to teach both Ronald and Harry the necessary Occlumency skills to keep Voldemort from their mind…"

"No way!" Ron interrupted him, jumping up from his chair, his face displaying nothing but pure panic. Harry had no problems understanding him. Even he felt uneasy at the thought, and Severus had acted tolerably around him for some time now, while he had been nastier to Ron over the last months than he had ever been with Harry, even during their worst times.

"Why do I have to learn that," Ron protested now loudly. "I won't spy on him or anything, and Snape would only make me…"

"Ron. Sit down," Hermione's voice, calm and quiet and pure steel. Ron's mouth snapped shut with an audible click and the unimaginable happened: He sat down without another word. Harry could see utter surprise spread on the faces of every Weasley in the room, and even on that of many teachers. They had never seen Ron that compliant.

But they had never put memories of the Cruciatus curse into his mind, either.

"Of course you won't spy or have any unnecessary contact with Voldemort," Hermione explained now patiently, but with an edge to her voice that told him she would not tolerate Gryffindor stupidity in this.

_Did I think "Gryffindor stupidity" just now? At least Draco didn't hear that one._

"But there _will_ be a few seconds when you confront Voldemort without me or the Order diverting his attention from you. He is a master Legilimens, and if he plucks even a hint of our plan from your minds, he will apparate away and everything will be over. We can't risk that. And that means that you and Harry must learn at least the basic steps of protecting your mind."

"But we have that spell of yours to protect our minds!" Ron protested, surprising Harry by his ability to argue even in the face of looming disaster.

"If we keep that spell active during our final confrontation, the first attempt to enter your mind will wipe it absolutely clean from classified information," Hermione answered. "You will stand at Tintagel without knowing what you are doing there, and why. Both of you will be totally useless, which is the same reason why I do not use that spell for myself. You will have to act in the face of Voldemort, and you will have to convince him that you are just two harmless students waiting there for the sake of a friendship ritual."

For a moment, it looked as if Ron wanted to disagree, but then he obviously decided that he couldn't win against Hermione. Not ever.

"Why can't you teach us, then?" He asked instead, but less stubborn than desperate.

"I don't have the time," Hermione answered regretfully. "And even if I could spare the hours, I don't have the slightest idea how to teach it. And believe me, you wouldn't want to learn it the way I did. It wasn't pleasant."

Harry wanted to argue that learning from Severus wasn't pleasant either, but then he remembered something about a boggart taking on Voldemort's form and torturing Hermione for information, and closed his mouth again. Besides, he wouldn't risk Severus' good will just to make a point.

He looked over to Severus and saw smug satisfaction glinting in his eyes. Without wanting to, he remembered the misery that had been his first Occlumency lessons, and as he turned to Hermione, she chuckled, obviously noticing the plea in his eyes.

"But I could certainly participate in the first few lessons, couldn't I, Severus?" She asked lightly. "After all, having two Occlumenses working together makes teaching a lot easier."

Harry turned his head towards Severus and saw a slightly disappointed expression, or at least he believed he saw it, as if the little bird had flown away the second before the cat had reached it.

"That sounds great," He said, relieved.

"If that is decided," Dumbledore took over again. "Let us summarize the events of the week. Nymphadora, if you would begin?"

It took more than an hour to collect every member's report and bring them all up to date, although Harry noticed that Dumbledore was hurrying them along more than usually. Personally, he would have preferred everyone to take as much time as possible – every additional report given would delay the minute when he would have to step up and present their project in front of these brilliant and/or much older people.

But as it always did when one was uneasy, time sped up and before he had prepared for it, Dumbledore's kind voice addressed him and Draco.

"You will all remember the idea Mr Potter and Mr Malfoy presented to us a few weeks ago and to which we agreed most happily. Today I have the pleasure to announce that they finished their work on the false prophecy and are ready inform us. If you would, gentlemen…"

"Right," Harry said and rose from his chair, sharing a nervous look with Draco, who just looked smug and cocked an eyebrow. But of course, he had been educated to attend pureblood dinners since the age of five. This meeting of what his father would have called "muggle-loving fools" couldn't affect his as severely as it would Harry.

"You all know the original prophecy, but I will still repeat it, to make comparison easier," He took a deep breath, feeling uneasy and slightly overwhelmed as he always did when the prophecy was mentioned. He still hadn't come to terms completely with being the Chosen One.

"The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches… born to those who have thrice defied him, born as the seventh month dies… and the Dark Lord will mark him as his equal, but he will have power the Dark Lord knows not… and either mast die at the hand of the other for neither can live while the other survives… the one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord will be born as the seventh month dies…"

He stopped, and let his eyes wander around the table. Hermione smiled at him and Severus sent a look that could be considered encouraging from any other man.

"As you are aware," He continued. "Voldemort knows the first half of the prophecy. That's why we won't change it. But I think we have found a wording that will encourage him to believe Halloween his best chance to defeat me, without losing the ambivalence of the usual prophecy. Draco?"

Draco nodded, and stood. They were standing nearly opposite each other, and Harry found that his queasiness subsided a bit when he looked at the Slytherin.

"The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches… born to those who have thrice defied him, born as the seventh month dies…" Harry began again, but this time it was Draco who took up the sentence and finished the new born prophecy for them.

„And the Dark Lord will lose his power," He said slowly, his voice lending the words a strange gravity, as if it was really a prophecy he was uttering. „But ere long he will regain it… Twice the power must be forged, on an ancient night at an ancient place, then the one who lived will fall, and the one who never died will triumph. And none shall defeat him thereafter, for in the earth lies his power. The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches..."

When Draco had finished and settled down in his chair again, silence was still reigning among the Order members. Harry saw Hermione nodding in thoughtful satisfaction, doubtless once more repeating the whole thing in her mind, picking every sentence, every word apart in search of hidden meanings they hadn't anticipated.

Despite his initial nervousness, Harry found that he had relaxed while Draco had recited their forgery. They had spent hours on this, and cross-checked both with the Headmaster, Hermione and Severus. The result was flawless.

„Sounds good," Moody finally grumbled after having finished his own, silend check of their prophecy, and nods around the table told him that the rest of the Order agreed.

„So what's going to be done with it?"

It was Dumbledore who answered. „The wording of this prophecy will be sent to a trustworthy… craftsman, a contact of Severus. He should produce a satisfactory fake prophecy that even Sybil wouldn't be able to tell from a real one."

Harry heard a most degrading comment on Sybil Trelawney's abilities from his left, uttered in the silky tones of his former Potions Master, and had to hide a grin. If there was anything Severus enjoyed most about not being a teacher anymore, it had to be the freedom of openly criticizing and belittling most of his former colleagues.

Only Professor McGonagall and Flitwick, as well as Remus, were luckily except from this rain of insults.

„If he keeps what he promised," Severus continued, and the dark tone in his voice promised woe if said craftsman wouldn't comply. "The fake prophecy will be ready for Voldemort's summer ball."

"Summer ball?" Tonks asked sceptically, probably finding it as difficult as Harry to imagine Death Eaters celebrating the warm, flowery season of the year.

"A highly traditional festivity," Severus answered. "The first part of the ball is a masquerade, giving the Inner and Outer Circle a chance to mingle without revealing their identities. The second part is for Inner Circle members only, and it consists of certain… rituals."

The way he pronounced the last word told them clearly that they didn't want to inquire about the nature of those rituals, and even Mrs Weasly kept quiet for once.

"I hope to offer the prophecy to the Dark Lord at the very beginning of the ball," Hermione continued calmly. "That way, he will have a whole night of festivities to think about it, before I will offer my solution to the obvious dilemma."

"You mean how anybody could bring Harry to an ancient place on either Halloween, Christmas or Beltane when he knows that Voldemort will be able to defeat him there and then?" Moody asked. "I find it hard to believe myself."

Harry nearly caught his breath. That was the one weakness in their plan. They had considered letting Hermione pretend that she had changed his memory. But the likelihood of the prophecy being mentioned around him over the next months simply would have been too great, and Voldemort might have found it too risky to base his plan on the feeble hope that no one would talk to Harry about it.

So they would have to rely on the Dark Lord's belief in himself and Hermione's ability to convince with the help of what she had strangely enough called "headology", adding with a little chuckle that it was "a witch's fiercest weapon".

"Harry has been foolish and headstrong in the past," Severus offered silkily. Harry winced. Not that he had needed that reminder of his past stupidities. But at least Severus hadn't phrased his words in present tense. A feeble silver lining was better than nothing.

"And that is the impression of Harry we have been cultivating over the last months," Hermione agreed. "We have staged impulsive fights, phases of sulking and unprovoked anger. I have reported on every incident in detail and added certain elements. As far as the Dark Lord knows, Harry is a moody teenager just waiting his chance to escape from the custody of the Headmaster, alternating between his fear of dying and his wish to be normal."

She smiled at Harry, who nodded his acceptance. After all those years, it was still hard to admit that he was anything but normal. But having extraordinary friends like her and Draco certainly made it easier to accept that fate.

"And you really think that You Know Who will base his plan on the moods of a teenager?" Mrs Weasley asked, scepticism in her voice showing clearly that she had learned not to trust teenager moods in her years as mother.

"Yes," Hermione answered simply and Severus nodded his agreement. When that didn't seem enough to convince Mrs Weasley, she sighed and shifted a bit in her chair. "I know the Dark Lord," She said quietly. "We both do." She shared another unreadable look with Severus, then turned her head back to the Weasley matriarch to continue.

"Like Harry, he has been headstrong and rash. But with Lord Voldemort, this rashness was the foundation of his power. He hated feeling inferior and helpless, and thus he opened the Chamber of Secrets and threatened mudbloods." She used the word without blinking, as if it was just a normal part of everyday conversation.

"He hated his father and killed him before he even left school. He hates muggleborns and has pursued them ever since."

"And he never listened to counsellors," Severus continued her explanation without missing a beat. "He won't believe that Harry does so, that he confides in other people than Mr Weasley and Hermione, which, he thinks, will both support this plan, mad as it is."

"All in all, he won't find it hard to imagine that Harry will meet us at Tintagel, not after the picture I painted of the Boy Who Lived and his terribly confined life at Hogwarts," Hermione took over again. "But of course it depends on the way I will offer him the information."

"Do you really think you can fool Voldemort into taking up your plan?" Shacklebolt now asked, not quite voicing his disbelief.

Hermione grinned. "I tricked all of you into accepting Draco, didn't I?" She answered, and the discussion was over.

The fake prophecy was followed up by a presentation of the fighting practice schedules. The assessment of their abilities, strengths and weaknesses had been completed, and now Remus spent a good ten minutes of detailing his plans for the next weeks.

It seemed rather anticlimactic to Harry, but then he was glad to relax and tune out the Order's voices for the moment. The mentioning of his name tore him from his thoughts. Obviously, they had reached the last – and to him most interesting – topic of the day. The ball that would hopefully give Hermione a chance to spy on Dougall.

"Apart from me and Harry, whose presence was requested by Aberforth, we have decided to take Remus and Minerva with us. Severus will be along as well, of course," Dumbledore was saying. "It won't be surprising that three teachers accompany me, and Harry will thus be guarded safely all the time."

Harry grimaced. Sometimes, he felt like the Philosopher's Stone, to be protected and kept safe like this. He caught Draco's slightly mocking expression from the other side of the room, and sent a scowl back. Draco was just jealous that he couldn't accompany them and watch Harry "embarrass himself and his house forever", as the Slytherin had nicely phrased it yesterday, when they had practiced dancing. Not that Harry planned on dancing with anybody tonight.

"From what Severus told me, I understand that he and Miss Granger have worked on a plan that will acquire a short moment of assistance from Remus and Harry, but nothing else?" Dumbledore continued, and Hermione nodded her affirmation.

"The only thing left to discuss are the details of Dougall's taste and the interior design of the ballroom," She said.

"I am happy to inform you fully on the detailed description my brother offered me," The Headmaster told her with a smile. "Aberforth will decorate the room in the traditional Dumbledore colours, dark brown and gold, and the liveries will sport the same colour combination."

"Do you have samples?" Hermione asked and accioed the small pieces of cloth Dumbledore produced. Snape did not even lift his head from yet another one of his infamous reports. Clearly, he intended to leave this thing entirely to Hermione.

Thoughtfully, Hermione nodded as if the samples were whispering secrets to her.

"Most people will choose darker, restrained colours in those surroundings. Is there a panelling in your brother's ballroom, Professor?"

"Oak," Dumbledore nodded serenely. "Rather reddish oak, due to an accident when we were younger…"

"You will advise your brother to dress darkly, and our company will choose nothing lighter than dark red. That goes for you, too, Headmaster," Hermione added with a stern look to Dumbledore.

"Certainly, my dear," He agreed happily. "But might I inquire why?"

"Because I will wear scarlet, and I should be the most noticeable person in the room. Did you find out about Dougall's preferences, Bill?"

Hermione had taken over the meeting completely, and to his astonishment Harry found that the quarrelsome Order accepted her leadership without the slightest hesitation. Perhaps it was the texture of her voice, that undertone that told them she would tolerate no waste of time, perhaps it was the way she looked, as if she would never expect anybody to disagree with her. Be it what it may, Bill was reporting to her as if he was reading out his homework to Minerva.

"I did as you proposed and asked his secretary if her boss wasn't interested in a beautiful woman like her, and she said no, for the love of God, she had made quite sure that she wasn't his type before she took the job. It seems that he is fixed on blonde, tall women with… big breasts," He finished, blushing violently. Molly Weasley sent him a disapproving look and Minerva suddenly seemed vastly interested in the view out of the east window.

"What exactly does "big" mean, Bill?" Hermione asked as if she was talking about apples and melons. Bill's blush deepened.

"Gods, I don't know, Hermione, it's not as if I could ask her to draw it out for me, could I?"

Hermione sighed as Minerva would when an essay wasn't done to her expectations. "How big were his secretary's breasts then? He must like them decidedly bigger, or he wouldn't mind her hair colour or size."

When Hermione had finished her sentence, Bill's hair was contrasting rather awfully with the colour of his face.

"Ahmmm… of the middle size, I think," He tried, his eyes darting from his mother to Minerva in quick succession. Remus couldn't keep a grin from spreading on his face.

"A bit more precision, Bill," Hermione urged him, and this time Remus was sure that she knew exactly what the poor boy suffered. Severus to her left was smirking, though his head was still lowered to his reports. "Is middle my size, or Tonks', or Fleurs? A big apple or a small grapefruit?"

"Ermhh... Tonk's, I think," Bill offered faintly and sank back in his chair with an exhausted sigh when Hermione nodded in acceptance.

"Plump or thin?"

"Gods, Hermione!" Bill cried out. "You're worse than Fleur when she wants to know about the fashion! Slender, I believe."

"Intelligent or stupid? Does he want to conquer, or does he prefer to be courted? Does he want them talkative or rather quiet? Inquisitive or indifferent?

It took Hermione more than twenty minutes to extract everything out of Bill, and the poor man was sweating profusely when she was finished with him.

"Did you enter his hotel room, Tonks?" She then asked, and Tonks, clearly having learned from the fate of her comrade, plunged into a report as detailed as she could managed.

She had been only able to sneak into the room for a minute, disguised as one of the housemaids, but it had been long enough to see the man and describe his robes and attire, including his features and height, in detail. She had also seen a little leather bound notebook and an old fashioned calendar on the table by the door, both small enough to fit into the inner pockets of a robe.

When she had finished her report and Hermione nodded without placing a further question, Tonks grinned at Bill in friendly competition and he scowled at her.

"Splendid," Hermione smiled at them all. "I know the necessary details now. This means that we need dark dress robes for Remus, Tonks, Harry and Dumbledore. Severus will wear the usual billowing robes. We also need a livery in the size of Severus, Headmaster. Could you organize one?"

"Certainly, my dear, but what…"

But Hermione wasn't really listening, murmuring about high heels and glamour charms instead.

"He isn't a pure blood lover, is he? As far as I know, most Americans are rather relaxed about issues like traditional dress codes,."

"His secretary didn't even wear wizarding robes, and neither does he, according to her," Bill remarked.

"Excellent! One more thing to set me off, then," She nodded to herself once more, then met the puzzled faces around her. "Severus will brief you on our plan. We will meet in the ballroom, but act as if you didn't know me. Have an efficient night!"

And before someone could inquire further, Hermione had left.

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A/N: „Headology" is an invention of the ingenious Terry Pratchett. Granny Weatherways, one of his witches, considers it to be the most important part of witching. It mainly consists of making people believe what you want them to, and making them see what they wanted to see anyway (I love the Pratchett's witches, by the way. If you never read anything about them, I recommend his new „Tiffany Aching" quartet, starting with „Wee Free Men". It's pure brilliancy).

I hope to finish the next chapter in about two weeks. Please be patient with me, and if you drop a review, it will warm my heart on cold winter evenings ;-)


	56. She Walks in Beauty

A/N: So it seems I won the Goblets' award for best drama fiction! Yipppeee! This is a thank you for all you wonderful people, who voted for me and wrote reviews and gave me support! Love you, and I hope you'll love the chapter!

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**She Walks in Beauty**

And a plan it was, indeed. Although there wasn't much action or thought to be involved on their side. All Harry, Professor Dumbledore, Professor McGonagall and Remus had to do was attend the ball, do whatever Severus told them, talk to anyone they could, test allegiances and keep the way clear for Hermione and Severus to do the work.

Although, Harry had to admit, he had no clear idea what exactly this work would entail.

"What are you planning to do?" He asked Snape as the group left through the castle's main entrance door and walked down to the edge of the wards. "Kidnap him or something?"

Snape smirked. "Hermione is going to get as much information out of him as possible," He answered. "And, if it is possible, she is going to alter his plans a bit. Subtle persuasion should suffice for that."

"Legilimency," Potter corrected, remembering how it had felt when Snape had entered his mind.

"Not on its own," Snape said. "Hermione is a master in combining the arts of the mind with… let us call it the arts of the body. She will find a way to get what we want."

"Pardon me?" Harry asked back, not able to imagine what Snape meant.

Severus just smiled, a tight lipped, grim smile. "You'll see."

They apparated to the front gates of Aberforth Dumbledore's estate. The driveway was lightened with rows and rows of torches, and servants in livery greeted the guests and led them in. Once more, Harry was thankful for his years at Hogwarts. Every muggle would have been gobsmacked by the sheer size and grandness of this place, but in comparison to the castle he called home, it was not all that impressive.

The moment they had crossed the threshold, Severus, who was still walking besides Harry, raised his hands and, murmuring a spell too quietly for Harry to hear, tipped a ring he was wearing on his left hand with his right index finger, in a quick succession of rhythms Harry could see no sense in.

But obviously the ring did, for he changed his colour pattern, and instead of the snake he had been showing beforehand on a red background, now a green stone displayed the image of an open gate.

"That's the sign for Hermione that we're in," Severus said quietly, having noticed Harry's curiosity.

_That it could have come to this_, Harry marvelled for a moment, _Severus speaking civilly with me, and explaining things to me without being forced to!_

"You communicate with a ring?" He asked aloud.

"Two rings. She is wearing the corresponding one," Severus answered. "We have developed a colour and symbol system that allows us to send a wide range of messages," He smirked. "For everything else, we have the symbol of a roaring fire, the equivalent of a "we have to talk"."

"Brilliant," Harry breathed, not finding it hard at all these days to spend his Professor a compliment.

"Oh, Hermione developed it, mainly," Severus answered, amused. "Don't you see the similarities to your famous DA-galleon?"

Harry wanted to answer, but they had finally reached the ballroom, and as soon as they had left the safe anonymity of the corridors, Severus's expression closed down to the usual forbidding scowl. Hastily, Harry adjusted his own face to a mixture of boredom, loathing and hate, and they stepped away from each other as far as possible, as if they felt unwell in the near presence of the other.

It was an act he had performed with Draco many times in public, but he'd never thought it would be as much fun with Severus.

He heard their names called out by another servant in livery, and only moments later Harry was assaulted by such a chaos of smells and colours that for a moment he wondered if Professor Trelawney had followed them and was now trampling him to death.

Their host for the evening had arrived, greeting Harry in a booming and slightly overwhelming voice, and the moment Harry looked at him, he knew what Professor Dumbledore had meant when he had told him, long ago, that he liked to dress with restrain. Compared to Aberforth Dumbledore, even the worst attire of the Headmaster paled into nothingness.

He noticed that the Headmaster and even Professor McGonagall received a very similar treatment, while Remus and Severus, more or less ignored by the people around them, had retreated to a corner and started to talk quietly.

He didn't know to how many people he had been introduced, or how many desperate attempts of small talk he had made, when a name called out by the servant froze him.

"Miss Martha Harritt," The servant announced, and Harry saw Dumbledore, McGonagall and Remus turn their heads to the entrance as well. Only Severus didn't bother to look and kept his bored gaze fixed on a statue by his side.

Martha Harritt. Mata Hari. Hermione's humour was really twisted.

But when Miss Harritt entered, Harry was sure that he had been wrong. This couldn't be Hermione!

She was approximately of the same size, but her hair was blonde and her eyes as blue as the Nordic sea. She didn't enter the room in the self-assured, wide stepped way Hermione walked, but seemed somehow to glide over the polished marble of the floor.

Her breasts were much bigger, too, or perhaps that was just the way her brilliant red dress was cut around the cleavage, or the way the stitched on red pearls seemed to point at them. The dress was long, but a slit in its side managed to reveal most of her legs nevertheless, though without giving the impression that she intended to show them off. Harry found himself following the soft movements of this slit involuntarily, and as he looked around him, he found that Remus and Dumbledore were fixed on it, too.

More and more heads began to turn as the blonde woman in the startlingly red dress entered the ballroom, and Harry could see an elderly man to his left whistle in appreciation.

"Now that's a pumpkin I wouldn't mind plucking," A voice whispered near his ear, and before Harry could answer, Aberforth Dumbledore was rushing towards Miss Harritt, his arms open wide as if to embrace her. Which he wouldn't mind doing one bit, Harry thought angrily.

But instead of averting his arms and seeming discourteous, the woman dropped into a slight curtsy, not only causing Aberforth to lower is arms, but also exposing a good part of her breasts to the public eye. Which consisted of very much everyone by now. Harry could see a man on the other side of the room licking his lips excitedly.

Aberforth greeted her more than cordially, not once stopping to ask how a woman he had never seen happened to attend his ball, and she answered his compliments with a high, slightly lisping voice that sounded a bit naïve and sported a soft American accent.

That couldn't be Hermione!

Harry had always hated women who lisped like that. He thought it sounded stupid, but with Miss Martha Harritt, it just seemed interesting to him. She seemed friendlier that way, more approachable, and he wondered if Aberforth would introduce him to the woman.

Of course he would.

After he had kept her full attention as long it was possible while remaining polite, he started to lead her around the room, starting, naturally, with the biggest celebrity of the evening.

"Oh my god, the famous Harry Potter," She cried out as soon as she reached him. "I always wanted to meet you!"

Harry very nearly choked on his drink. It was Hermione. From closer up, he could recognize her facial features all too clearly, but still he had to fight with himself not to blush or stammer or make a general fool of himself.

"Pleased to meet you, Miss Harritt," He managed finally, very proud of himself that he hadn't stressed her name uncommonly.

"Oh, call me Martha, dear," She offered with a blinding smile that displayed two rows of white teeth and a pink little tongue.

Harry gulped.

"And this must be the famous Albus Dumbledore," She cried out, turning towards the Headmaster. Her American accent lengthening his name in a very appealing way. "The brother of our most gracious host, if I am not mistaken?"

"You are well informed, madam," Dumbledore replied, lowering his head respectfully. "I am delighted to meet you. You are American?"

"Indeed, I am," Through thick lashes she glanced up at him admiringly as if he had said the most clever thing in the world, and Dumbledore cleared his throat nervously.

"Oh, but then I must introduce you to a fellow citizen," Aberforth interjected and took her arm, obviously not willing to leave her alone for much longer. "Mr Dougall is American, too, and would be happy to meet you, I am sure."

"How thoughtful of you, Mr Dumbledore," Hermione-Martha cried out and the way she leaned into his arm was altogether indecent.

"Call me Aberforth, my dear," Harry heard and saw her giggle delightedly in answer, before the crowds shielded them from view.

Feeling a bit unsure on his legs, he walked over to Severus and Remus.

"What the hell was that," He asked, noticing that Remus made the choking sounds again that seemed to be his natural reaction to Hermione these days.

"That," Severus answered, grinning amusedly as if he knew exactly what went on in Harry's head. "That is Hermione when she decides to wear make-up and shut off her brain."

"Gods," Harry groaned and concentrated on the wall behind them, trying to reign in his embarrassment. "I stared at her breasts!"

"Most of the room did," Remus whispered back, not adding that he had, too, and that he felt like he needed a very cold shower.

"That is just the beginning," Severus said, his grin broadening. "You haven't seen her dance yet."

They only caught snippets of Hermione over the next hour, for she was concentrating all of her impressive charms on Dougall, and with imminent success, it seemed.

They could hear her high, childish laughter time and again, however, and Harry seriously wondered how a simple laugh could be so inviting. Still, his heart increased its pace whenever he caught an image of her. _That's Hermione_, He told himself over and over again, but still he blushed when she winked at him once.

Remus didn't seem to fare any better. He followed Severus around the room like a zombie, torn between embarrassment and more embarrassment, and still he straightened whenever Hermione passed by them.

"He's hooked," Severus told them about half an hour later. He showed them his ring, which displayed a fishing rod with a fish attached to it. Hermione really had the most twisted sense of humour, Harry thought again. "Now she only has to drive him wild enough not to wait for the end of the ball," Severus added, scanning the room for Martha Harritt and her partner. "One dance should suffice."

"Why are you talking about dancing all the time?" Harry demanded, and, just like he had done a few hours before, Severus just smirked.

"You'll see," He repeated. "When I leave the room, you will follow me. We'll need your assistance."

And then the dancing began, and Harry did see, indeed.

Hermione was one of the first to step on the dance floor, having coaxed her slightly overweight partner Dougall into it easily enough. The tune was a slow waltz, and it became apparent very soon that Mr Dougall hadn't any idea how to dance it.

But that didn't matter. Hermione more than made up for it.

She seemed to melt into his body, gliding around him and rubbing against him, always in movement but never far from him. It wasn't obscene, or vulgar, but still one couldn't help but associate her full lips, open in breathless delight, with a slow, intense kiss, or her leg, visible through the slit of her gown, then not, then again, with a woman undressing. This wasn't just flirting, it was foreplay, and at least the male part of the room seemed to yearn for the next stage.

It was the most intoxicating thing Harry had ever seen, and he was standing many feet away from her. _Dougall must be overwhelmed by it_, He thought distractedly while listening to the choking sounds Remus was making again.

"Where did she learn that?" He whispered to Severus and received a sardonic smile.

"I believe from one or two books in the library," Was the answer, and Harry couldn't help but turn around to Severus and stare at him in amazement. "There might be a chapter about dancing in "Hogwarts: A History", as well," Their Spymaster deadpanned, then he returned his concentration to the dancing couple that was watched enviously by more than one pair of eyes.

"They will leave the dance floor in ten seconds," Severus said dispassionately, and Harry wondered what was going on in him, seeing the woman he loved dance like that with another man. But if it disturbed him, there was nothing in his face to betray that feeling.

"Five, four, three," He counted calmly. "Two, one."

He didn't even bother to look, just strode away into the direction of a door leading from the ball room, but Harry and Remus, who hurried after him, saw that Dougall had taken Hermione's arm and was leading her away in the opposite direction.

She laughed again and threw back her head as she walked, heavy curls toppling down her back and exposing the delicate skin of her neck. Dougall wore the expression of a starving man. Then, they had reached the door and Hermione and her victim vanished out of sight. After the heat and the colours of the ballroom, the corridor they had stepped into seemed unnaturally quiet.

"Follow me," Severus told them, taking a left and shortly afterwards a right turn. His hands were opening the tiny buttons of his dress robes in rapid succession, revealing the livery every servant had worn tonight.

"Take that," Severus told Remus and dropped his black robes into the other man's hands. Then, with three sharp raps of his wand against his own forehead, Severus vanished, to be replaced by a mouse haired, nondescript servant.

"Better hide your scar and hair as well," Severus murmured to Harry who was staring at him in surprise. Severus hadn't just spelled his face. Just like Hermione when she had turned herself into Martha Harritt, his stance and aura had undergone a distinct change. Where he had strode upright before, he was now stopping slightly, and his shoulders hung lower than they had before. His legs were a bit crooked, and he had suddenly developed a strange tick that made him lick his lips nervously every other second. "They are too obvious. We don't want anybody to notice you."

A flick of his wand, and Harry saw in a nearby mirror that his hair had taken on a light brown. His scar had vanished.

"That charm shouldn't stay for long, but it is sufficient for our needs," Severus told him, and now Harry noticed that his voice had lost its velvety quality and the precise articulation. He sounded ordinary, and Harry found it hard to recall what he had said.

"Is that magic?" He asked while Severus walked on, for the first time in Harry's memory not looking intimidating at all. His walk had changed, too.

"No," Remus answered with a slight smile. "That is acting, simple and brilliant."

The corridor Severus had chosen led them around the ballroom in a wide, gentle curve, and after less than five minutes they had reached a series of balconies, opening up from the corridors.

Guests of the ball were walking along the broader corridor and Severus bowed to them all, an awkward movement that made them turn their heads away quickly.

"Through here, dear sirs," He then said in a voice eager to please. "Through here, please!"

And he opened the glass door of one of the balconies. They were greeted by the distinct groaning of a man from somewhere near.

"Through here," Severus whispered, and Remus and Harry followed him onto the balcony to the left of the obviously occupied one. The moon was standing brightly in the sky, and although the balconies were divided by a latticework around which roses were curling their delicate bodies, Harry could clearly make out their neighbours.

Hermione and Dougall, engaged in what could only be described as heavy snogging.

"Oh, Baby, you're fabulous," She whispered now, lust clouding her voice, and trailed kisses down his throat.

"Nothing against you, sweetheart," Dougall groaned, his hand wandering to her butt. "Nothing against you!"

Instead of an answer, Hermione pressed herself even closer against his body and suddenly threw her arms wide, granting him easier access to her breasts. Her hand brushed along the roses and Severus suddenly reached out in the same direction. When he drew back his arm, Dougall's notebook and wallet were resting in his hand.

"Oh, Baby," Hermione moaned on the other balcony. "Look into my eyes, darling! I wanna see your beautiful eyes!"

Then, suddenly, all noises stopped.

Severus passed the notebook and wallet to Remus, who browsed through them quickly and cast a duplicate charm on the notebook, then he stepped even closer to the edge of the balcony, until leaves and roses brushed against his still face

A moment later, Hermione's hand reached through the flowers and he took it quickly, closing his eyes and all expression fading away from his face.

"I don't believe it," Remus whispered in awe. "He is entering Dougall's mind via her body! I have never seen the likes of it! She must be an exceptional Legilimens!"

Harry wanted to protest in disbelief. How could Severus enter the mind of someone he couldn't even see? Granted, he didn't know much about Legilimency, but that seemed completely impossible to him. _You are dealing with Severus and Hermione here_, He then reminded himself. With those two, nothing was impossible.

Suddenly, Severus reached for the notebook and wallet Remus was still holding. He transferred them to Hermione, who freed her hand again, and Severus stepped back from the edge in one swift, fluid motion. The moans and whispers on the other balcony started again.

But this time, Severus didn't remain quiet.

"I am sorry gentlemen, if you don't like this one," He said loudly, in a tone that made quite clear what he thought of these picky guests. "Let me show you the next one, perhaps it is more convenient to you."

And with a lot of noise, shuffling of feet and grumbling, he opened the glass door to the corridor.

The noises from the left stopped again.

"Oh, I cannot do this here, darling," Harry heard Hermione whine. "Will you go and find a room for us? Some place with a lock? You know, I get quite loud when I lose control…"

Harry left the balcony just as Dougall hurried away in the direction of the ballroom. Severus followed him quietly, not without taking his robes back from Remus and dropping a small parcel to the ground as he passed the balcony to the right.

A moment later, Hermione stepped into the corridor, took up the parcel as if she had just dropped it and rushed past them.

"Quickly, follow me," She whispered. "Severus is getting the others."

She opened the parcel while she strode along the corridor as if she had all the time in the world. But the moment they had turned to the left and were alone, she turned back to Harry, tapped his head with her wand and then shook out the content of the package. It was an invisibility cloak, and a moment later, Hermione had vanished.

"To the main entrance," She whispered. "I need you near me when the servants clear your apparation."

And so they walked towards the exit, with fast but self-assured steps, only a slight swishing from Hermione's skirts hinting at her presence. In the entrance hall they met Professor McGonagall and Dumbledore, and a moment later Severus joined them, as brooding and bored as if he had spent the evening avoiding people in general and Potter especially.

"It's such a shame that you leave already, dearest brother," Aberforth called after them and Dumbledore gave him a little wave. Then they reached the apparition point and, with an uncountable number of plops, apparated away.

They reappeared in front of the Three Broomsticks. Madame Rosmerta stopped them on their way to the fireplace and asked how the party had been, but Severus gave her such a sneer that she stepped away from him in surprise. Dumbledore happily delivered a condensed version of the ball ("It was fantastic my dear, just fantastic, but I am an old man, and now I really need to rest!") and they flooed away to Headmaster's office, Severus being the first to enter the fireplace, and, shielded as he was by the other members of their party, no one noticed that there was a grey shape besides him where only green flames should have been.

The whole thing had went just incredibly smooth, Harry thought, still a bit dazed, as he stepped through the magic tapestry connecting Dumbledore's office with Headquarters and saw Hermione remove her cloak. She looked as enticing in the more sober atmosphere of the Headquarters as she had in the glittering ballroom.

He had to turn his head away when she bent down to remove her shoes. "Gods, I hate these high heels," She groaned and collapsed onto a sofa.

"But they look so good on you, dear," Severus mocked her mildly and she scowled up at him.

"How did it go?" Only when Harry heard his voice did he realize that Draco was standing by his side, fixing his eyes not on Hermione but on Severus. He was the only one in the room. Even Professor McGonagall was staring at Hermione.

After a moment, when it became obvious that no one would answer, Remus cleared his throat.

"Just take a look at Hermione and you know," He said, his voice unsure. "It was perfect."

"Great," Draco said as if he didn't notice the atmosphere in the room. He sat down and for the first time turned his eyes on Hermione. "You really look better in green," He commented calmly.

"I know," She answered, and it was the voice of Hermione again. Harry noticed that her face had lost the last expression of stupidity while she talked. "But green didn't fit into the main colour scheme so well."

"Pity," Draco said. "Well, at least you were blonde. I hated the red hair."

"Oh thank you very much," Severus remarked from the side of the room. "I chose the red hair last time."

"Good thing you let _her_ do the choosing tonight, then," Draco said, smiling, and pointed at Hermione. "So you got his timetable?"

Hermione nodded, sighed as if a sudden headache had assaulted her, and closed her eyes in exhaustion.

"His wallet, his notebook and all his memories about the meetings with Auden Strong," Severus answered in her stead. "We traded them against the urgent wish to leave Great Britain early next morning and hide away in Mexico for half a year or so."

"You manipulated his mind?" Remus asked, and it wasn't clear if he was shocked or awed.

"No, Hermione did while I extracted his memories," Severus answered pleasantly and handed Hermione a potion. "That's why she has the headache now and I feel fine."

"Selfish bastard," Hermione grumbled, uncorked the bottle and downed its content without opening her eyes. "And what a filthy mind that Dougall had. Simply disgusting. I was really tempted to convince him to take a mental bath."

"I believe that, judging by the way he and most men in that room looked at you, he would have done anything you wanted, my dear." Dumbledore said weakly and chose an armchair near the fireplaces. "I must confess that I hadn't quite expected the events of the evening."

"Me neither," Remus agreed quietly.

"But why?" Hermione asked and opened her eyes again. "You were here, after all, when we planned this."

Her eyes met Harry's and he felt what had to be blush number hundred of this evening stir inside him. Suddenly, Hermione laughed.

"Oh, don't tell me you expected me to rush in as my usual self, wearing sweet little pink dress robes and good sensible shoes?" She chuckled, and Harry, who had expected just that until she had stood before him in that gorgeous dress, felt the heat rise into his cheeks.

"I told you that she was the most beautiful woman on a Death Eater ball," Draco remarked pleasantly. "And believe me, Death Eaters know how to dress."

"That we do indeed," Hermione agreed easily, and laughed again at Harry's obvious distress.

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A/N: I had lots of fun writing this one, and I hope you had reading it, too! Now all you have to do is click the little button down the left and tell me about it!


	57. To Dance with the Best

**To Dance with the Best**

The air was calm on this Thursday afternoon, filled with the sweet fragrance of blossoms and water, speaking clearly of the summer that was to come. It was May, an unusually warm and sunny May for the north of Scotland, and students with free time on their hand were spending their time outside, walking the shore of the lake or resting under the shade of Hogwarts' large, century old trees.

A gentle breeze danced along the lakeshore and caught their chatter and laughter, carrying it upwards to the open windows of a high tower that no one could have connected to an inhabited part of Hogwarts. It lazily travelled through a perfectly equipped lab and played with the hair of a young woman curled up in a chair in the corner of said room.

Hermione looked up as the air caressed her face, then breathed past her head and out of the window. Her eyes fell on Severus, hard at work at one of his experimental potions, and she smiled contentedly.

It had been a good idea to bring her work up to the lab. This way she could work through the texts on Occlumency theory she hoped to use for Harry's and Ron's lessons and still sneak an admiring glance at Severus now and then.

He looked much more human in his black pants and white shirt, and although she wouldn't have needed this additional proof of his being human, the way he was utterly lost in his work was simply adorable.

For a moment she seriously considered distracting him from his work and leading him downstairs to their bedroom, but then she sorrowfully remembered that potions, unlike textbooks, didn't react well to being left unattended. The necessity to finish work first was ingrained into every Potions Master's personality and overrode every other need.

Not that she seriously wanted him to go slack on his work, but it was strange to see him so absorbed in something that was not her. _He probably forgot I was here the moment he turned to the cauldron_, She thought amusedly, and wondered for a moment whether it was really healthy to consider that cute in a man.

Probably not, she then decided, but who cared?

"With you, it all sounds so easy," He suddenly said, proving her wrong.

"What?" She asked absently, rather too concentrated on his shapely backside.

"Everything. Spying. Convincing Voldemort that your plans are the best. Planning situations like the ball."

She snorted. "Aren't you the one who told me that you never informed Dumbledore fully? Half of them believed you still were a Death Eater till my fifth year."

"But they never knew what I was doing," He argued, his back still to her, his hands still chopping and grinding ingredients. "All they received were selected pieces of information, and those were given by Albus, without any reference to me. But they know more about your work than they ever learned about mine in all those years. And still you give them the feeling that it's all one huge piece of cake."

Hermione shrugged, not really seeing his points. "What use is there in making them worry? Harry is nervous every time he knows about a revel as it is, and l can barely stop Draco from hovering around me. Why should I tell them how much can go wrong at my end of the plan?"

"Because then they would be more careful about what danger they send you into."

He had finally turned around to her, obviously finished with the active part of the potion. The moment his eyes rested on her, she knew that this wasn't just a philosophical discussion. He was worried, and that worried her.

"But that's exactly what I want to avoid," She argued. "Just imagine the Order discussing my every move. We would never get any work done! They would be just like you, in the beginning!"

She saw his eyes darkening and his face closing, and knew that this had been the wrong thing to bring up now. But instead of trying to apologize, she sent him a wave of her love and admiration.

_You know how much I cherish our partnership_, She whispered inside his mind and saw – and felt – him relax.

"What use is there in telling them that it took us three whole days to plan the Dougall-operation?" She tried again. "They would only have tensed up and made it impossible for us to play the thing through smoothly. This way, however, they are awed and let us do our job. Everybody's happy."

"As long as our plans functions satisfactorily," He objected quietly, and she frowned at the implications.

"What do you hint at, Severus?"

"You are offering them the impression that you can control the Dark Lord, that you can play him as you play the Order," He answered, then sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. "I know that you want to keep them off your skin more than anything else and that this illusion helps.

"But the fact is, Voldemort is a dangerous maniac, and he will remain so no matter how much influence you gain. No good will, no achievement can save you when he decides to suddenly kill you off, as he has done with so many in the past years. Even as an Inner Circle member, even as Lucius Malfoy himself, you can never be sure what will happen with him in the room. And as a female mudblood, a friend to Potter, your life is in peril every time you walk into his presence."

"I know that, Severus," She told him calmly. "I've seen Death Eaters killed out of the whim of one moment as well as you."

"I know that you know it," He answered. "But they have no idea about it. Their knowledge about the Dark Lord amounts to "He's evil. We're trying to kill him". If you tell them you control his moods, they will believe you. And I wonder why you are trying to create that impression."

She huffed. "I am not trying to create anything. All I want is to work in peace."

She was too much a professional not to meet his eyes or give any other sign of guilt, but still she could see in the way he turned back to his potion that he didn't consider his questions answered. She wasn't surprised. It wouldn't have been Severus if he had taken her words for face value.

"Besides," She added, trying to lead the talk back to safer waters. "Even if I would tell them about the dangers or about what I had to do to rise to my position, they wouldn't realize it in their heads. Look at the way Harry reacted at the ball. Theoretically, he must have known how well I can act. But still he behaved as if he had never expected me to become something like 'Marthy Harrit'."

Severus hummed an agreement. "Oh, the human mind," He intoned. "What a fickle thing it is."

She smiled. "Do not worry about me, Severus," She said softly. "I am a cat, you know. We have nine lives."

He nodded, thoughtfully, as if this was a theory worth pondering. Then he lifted his head, and his dark, burning eyes met her with an intensity that caused her heart to beat wildly in her throat.

"I know, Hermione. It is just that, sometimes, I try to imagine my life without you, a life like the one I led a year ago, or even ten." He smiled, but it came out more like a grimace, a helpless gesture to lighten the atmosphere.

"And I find that, despite all my Slytherin cunning and my vast imagination, I cannot even think about that life without you. It simply doesn't exist any longer. Everything that belongs to me, that defines me, is rooted in you."

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Lunch on a Saturday usually was a lazy affair, with many of the seventh years missing. Slytherin had as much a legacy of finding the kitchens and relieving the house elves of their excellent pasties as any house in Hogwarts, and on a day as beautiful and warm as this one, most chose to take their meals outside, wanting to get as much sun as was possible during the short Scottish summers.

Draco, however, had opted for the Slytherin table today.

With Theodore Nott gone – his sudden vanishing from school had been explained with a death in the family, but all of them with Death Eater parents knew the truth, of course – leadership of the house, or at least the part opting for Voldemort's side, had returned to Draco.

Rumours of his expected inclusions into the Death Eater ranks as well as his apprenticeship with their new Potions teacher had reached everyone by now, and he could watch their attitudes towards him change with the typical, careful Slytherin slowness.

Not that he cared about their attitudes, the less than subtle offerings of Pansy Parkinson or the way Goyle and Crabbe had resumed their 'bodyguard duties'. It was more a nuisance than anything, having them watch him again, have them noticing his absence from the Common Room.

But a long talk with Severus had convinced him that his house looked for leadership among their own ranks, anyway, and it was better if they chose him than if they chose Parkinson or Dewwood by from sixth year. Every Slytherin who confided in him was one insecurity, one unchecked source in the middle of Hogwarts less.

So he had started to spend more time in the Common Room and at the House table again, and the result had surprised him. On the one hand, he enjoyed being able to play the little games again that were second nature to most Slytherins.

While Hermione was an expert in anything connected to power and intrigue, and even Harry was coming along nicely, they choose to use their abilities only towards the outside.

He enjoyed this open, warm and trusting way of interacting, as much as they enjoyed the way Severus handled the Order, but that sort of communication simply lacked a sort of tension he had been used to since infancy.

The dance with words, sharp as knifes and elegant as humming birds, the constant search for hidden meanings and subtle threats, the ever changing power structure and fluid hierarchy of the Slytherins fit his nature, and he enjoyed returning to his snake den – even if it was only for show.

There was one other thing that made the midday meals at Slytherin table bearable – he could easily watch Harry, Hermione and their friends from his place, and his age old rivalry with the Gryffindors gave him the perfect excuse to do so.

All he needed was a degrading comment now and then, things that sprang from his lips nearly automatically, and his constant scrutiny of the other table was fully justified to his housemates.

This way, he could watch Harry's performance in public for flaws and later point them out to him – or rather tease him mercilessly with the few mistakes he made these days. Sometimes, he wondered what it was like to spend his days with people as open and dense as Gryffindors. Nice, he decided, but also awfully boring.

"In my new position as apprentice, I expect to be invited to staff meetings, of course," He now drawled, catching and admiring look from Pansy and forcing himself not to roll his eyes in irritation. Really now. That girl was simply too stupid for Slytherin. What a pity that she lacked any quality that could have landed her in another house.

Sometimes, he missed Nott. At least _he_ had known how to play the game with finesse. Until Hermione came his way. That thought usually served to sober him and drive all nostalgic notions from his mind.

"Just look at Potter," Pansy now hissed. Criticising others was her favourite pastime, and of course the Gryffindor table earned the brunt of it. "He is biting his nails again. That boy is simply disgusting! And to think they hail him as hero!"

"A hero of the unsophisticated," Draco commented, earning himself a laugh around the table while he threw a long look at Harry.

He was nervous, Draco knew that from their meeting the night before. This evening would see his and Weasley's first Occlumency lesson, and while Harry felt much more secure around Severus these days, the memories of his lessons in fifth year were enough to turn him into a nervous wreck easily.

But the projection of this nervousness to the outside, spicing it up with baleful glares towards the Headmaster's empty place at the Head Table was done nicely. Draco sighed and shook his head as if so much Gryffindor idiocy caused him a great deal of world weariness. There would be nothing to tease Harry with tomorrow evening.

Unless… He brightened up and added another degrading comment about Gryffindors, one Harry had actually come up with. Perhaps Harry and the weasel would embarrass themselves this evening and Hermione would be nice enough to tell him.

That would finally give him a chance to avenge himself for all the Mrs Weasley-teasing that had gone on over the last weeks. Really now, was it his fault that the woman had decided to knit him a woollen monster with a large 'D' on it for his birthday?

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"Ready, mate?" Harry asked as they stood before the tapestry connecting Severus' rooms with the Headquarters. Ron did nod, although it rather looked like a nod desperately wanting to be a shake.

True, Hermione _had_ promised them to attend at least the first lesson, but these days you never could be too sure where Hermione would be outside class. She might be talking strategy with Moody and Dumbledore, out for a Death Eater meeting or some of the projects she was working on directly with Severus.

Not to mention that he suspected her of being involved in lots of things he had never even heard of.

But when he gave the sign for someone who wished to enter and the tapestry glowed golden a few moments later, Hermione was standing on the other side, smiling at them encouragingly.

"Severus will be here in a moment," She said. "Can I offer you something to drink?"

"Firewhisky?" Harry asked hopefully and Hermione laughed.

"Not a good idea," She said. "You should think as quickly and clearly as possible for this. I'd recommend to wait with the whisky till after the lesson."

She flicked her hand and a pot of tea along with four cups and saucers appeared on a table near two sofas. Using wandless magic looked so ordinary with her, Harry thought irritatedly as he walked over to the sofas, pulling the reluctant Ron after him. But when he himself had tried it, nothing had happened. For hours. _The saviour of the wizarding world should be able to do something like that_, he thought crossly.

"Relax, Ron, " She said, and offered the red head a cup. "Occlumency doesn't hurt, usually. Now, I want you to transfer thoughts you don't want Severus or me to see into my pensieve," She gestured over to a desk by the window, were the stone basin stood. "That way you won't have to worry about the lessons too much."

"I would practically have to empty my whole head," Harry muttered, expecting Ron to agree, but found that Ron was just staring at the pensieve with a stricken expression, his face pale and his shoulders slumped.

Of course. This was the first time for Ron to enter Severus' quarters since they had found out about Hermione, and the pensieve had to remind him of an even uglier scene. Being confronted with your own stupidity and betrayal was never an easy thing, but considering that they were to open their heads to Hermione and Severus in a few minutes, it had to be truly terror inspiring.

In the face of his friends utter misery, Harry's worries seemed a small thing, and so he got up and walked over to the pensieve slowly, again pulling Ron with him. Hermione demonstrated how to remove the thoughts, then created a barrier around the silvery liquid when he was finished, probably to keep his and Ron's thoughts from merging.

Harry felt strangely light with so many of his memories gone. He wondered what it would be like to spend his days like this, without the thoughts of Cedric and Sirius and his own mistakes, but then decided that it wasn't worth considering. Too much of what defined him would be missing this way.

"Severus is coming," Hermione told them and Harry turned around quickly, expecting their Spymaster to walk down the stairs or appear through a door. Instead, he saw nothing for a moment, and then the golden glow of a tapestry.

He threw a questioning glance at Hermione, who just smiled back and ignored his silent question completely. She was very good at that, he had found.

Severus stepped into the room with gliding steps, his robes billowing behind him. He nodded to both Harry and Ron and shared a short glance with Hermione, but Harry noticed that he didn't smile nor touch her in any way. From the way Hermione was reacting towards him, nobody could have discerned a relationship between them of any kind.

But although he understood that their changed behaviour was due to Ron's presence in these rooms, that they wanted to avoid any provocation or disclosure of vulnerabilities, he found that he missed the usual relaxed, witty atmosphere Severus and Hermione seemed to create these days simply by being in the same room.

"Best start with the lesson, then," Hermione announced. "We have little enough time as it is."

Harry nodded, accepting her decision, but again a small pang of disappointment went through him. So no chatting over tea tonight, or a presentation of Hermione's newest projects. Down to business it was, and Harry was reminded very much of the way training with the Outer Circle was spent.

"Occlumency," Severus announced in the ominous tone he usually used when teaching. "Is an art of the mind only partially connected with magic. It works on more than one level, from the basic structuring and organising of thoughts with the help of meditation to the defence of one's mind against possible attacks to the conscious building, re-forming and modelling of the mind."

He paused, looked at Harry as if waiting for questions and glared at Ron, who ducked his head as he usually did in the presence of Severus.

"You will," He continued then, when no questions came forward. "Of course never reach that level of Occlumency, at least not within the few months before Halloween. Our task will only be to fortify your mind in a way not just as effective as possible in this small amount of time, but also in a way that you will be able to uphold even against the Dark Lord."

He paused again, and Harry gave a small nod that he had understood so far. In fact, he thought, this small speech alone had taught him more about Occlumency than his whole fifth year experience had. Perhaps Severus _could_ be a decent teacher if he wanted to.

Then he remembered that Hermione had learned Occlumency to a master level on the basis of Severus' teaching back then, or rather, on the basis of just Harry's faulty memory, and had to admit that he had perhaps become a better student since then, too.

"Since 'clearing your mind' didn't work that well last time," Hermione continued, sending Severus and Harry a wry grin. "We have developed another form of exercise that should help you. Choose a comfortable position, please."

The sudden command seemed to surprise Ron, for he twitched and then looked around himself doubtfully, as if he found it hard to imagine that any position in the vicinity of the Spymaster might be 'comfortable'.

After a moment of hesitation, Harry shrugged off his sneakers and sat on the sofa cross legged, his back supported by a large, red silk pillow.

"Ready," He announced after testing the position for a few seconds and finding no fault with it. A moment later, Ron echoed his readiness.

"Right then," Hermione continued brightly. "I want you to now close your eyes. Instead of trying to avoid thoughts, try to consciously reflect on what you're thinking. Try to find structures and patterns within your associations, and try to visualize your thoughts as well as possible. In short: we want you to understand _how_ you think. That should give you a better basis for stopping it."

Outwardly, Harry was nodding again and closing his eyes, his face becoming a picture of stillness. Inwardly, his mind reeled. Visualize his thoughts? Structure his associations? What the heck was she talking about?

He tried hard, he really did, but even trying to keep track of his thought progress was too much for him. The way he saw it, the effort to reflect on his thoughts only created new ones, which needed to be reflected on, which caused other associations which wanted to be reflected which drove him nuts. Really.

He managed to sit still, eyes closed, for what seemed to measure up to an eternity. When he opened his eyes again, however, he found that only five minutes had passed. Hermione was sitting directly opposite him and watching him with amusement twinkling in her eyes, while Severus to his left was staring Ron down, who had obviously given up a bit earlier.

"I'm sorry," Harry apologized, feeling a blush rising in his cheeks and hating the fact that he couldn't control his facial colour, no matter what Draco tried on him. "I just don't know _how_ to visualize something. I never tried that sort of thing before. Perhaps if you could give me an example…"

Hermione sighed and turned towards Severus. All expression faded from their faces, the telltale sign of one of their mental conversations. After less than a minute, Severus nodded and Hermione returned her attention to her peers.

"We think it would work better if I showed it to you from the inside," She told them, and that display of silent, incredibly fast communication was enough to make the wish for Occlumency skills rise again in Harry.

"What inside?" Ron asked hesitatingly.

"The inside of my mind," Hermione answered. "Just give me a moment to tidy up a little." And that said, her face relaxed completely once more and her eyes closed slowly, as if of their own accord.

Harry threw a questioning glance at Severus.

He shrugged. "That's the easiest way of showing you how visualisation works."

"Exactly," Hermione agreed, her eyes now open again. "I'll pull you into my mind now, Harry, Ron. It will feel a bit like side along apparation, so brace yourselves."

Another thing Hermione had learned from the Slytherins, Harry thought dazedly as his world dissolved into a mad whirl of colours and structures, was the art of understatement. This was _awful_, and he couldn't get the image of himself throwing up inside Hermione's mind out of his thoughts. That had to be the greatest possible embarrassment ever.

The feeling of movement, blindingly fast and directed by a force outside of his own will, was overwhelming, although he was somehow at the same time aware of sitting quietly on the couch, Ron at his side.

Then, suddenly, he stood still, twilight around him. Slowly, he turned in a circle, trying to determine where he was, but all he saw was the grey in between of an endless plane.

Until, with a shrill sound of surprise, Ron stood by his side, and opposite them Hermione flashed into existence.

"Welcome to my mind," She said with a smile.

"A grey desert?" Harry asked, a bit sceptic. "That's not what I'd have expected, honestly."

Hermione grinned. "That's the reason it's here," She answered. "This place is not only the front entrance to my mind, but also its first level of defence. This is what a mind cleared of all thoughts looks like, basically. Normally, one is only able to achieve this state of absolute 'thoughtlesness' for short periods of time, but the more you train, the better you get. A nondescript plane like this makes orientation very difficult – you can't even be exactly sure what's up and down. It will take anyone trying to penetrate your mind some time to find the things he searches if you present him with such an entry hall."

She nodded, as if satisfied with the first part of her demonstration. Then, she moved her thumb and index finger in a peculiar gesture, as if she was trying to pry a curtain apart, and suddenly, the greyness divided in two, offering them a view of what lay below – or above? – its smooth skin.

"That's us, in the Great Hall," Ron called out, surprised by the vivid pictures that suddenly seemed to surround them. "And there's our first Charms class!"

That's the second level of defence," Hermione explained. "A thick layer of memories, invented or real, that try to project a certain character or state of mind. At the moment, it is set at the standard 'school girl' imagery."

She smiled again. "The set of memories can be changed at will, and if they are well constructed and mixed, this level will fool most Legilimenses, especially if they don't expect you to be trained. Even Severus fell for it."

The harsh lines around her mouth that aged her face for less than a second told Harry that it certainly hadn't been these innocent memories Severus had seen, but he knew her well enough not to ask.

"On to the third level, then," She continued after they had gazed together on the dance of memories from seven school years. "You will probably not rise above this level before Halloween, but seeing the other elements of a complete 'fortification' might help you nevertheless."

In a swift series of falls, or at least that was what Harry's rather overwhelmed sense of orientation told him, Hermione introduced them to five more layers of defence, one appearing like fire, the next like ice, the third one moving like dark living shadows that seemed to Harry strangely threatening. Level four and five where huge, seamless steel doors, and when a twiddle of Hermione's fingers made them glide aside, Harry could see that they were thicker than the outer walls of Hogwarts.

"Now this," Hermione gestured to what was beyond the steel doors. "Is my true mind, the content of the nutshell, so to speak."

Carefully where he put his feet, and still not completely trusting this strange place, Harry stepped forwards and gasped in surprise. He wasn't sure what he had expected from the mind of a Legilimens, but it definitely wasn't this.

Not the maze of the third triwizard task.

They were standing on a hill, overgrown with grass so silky and soft that it had the texture of fur, and before them, spreading as far as they could see, green hedges grew, twisted and occasionally formed ways under a sky that slowly pulsed in a golden, indirect light. Harry could see glimpses of white and grey among the hedges, structures that he guessed to be buildings, and movement that he could have sworn belonged to animals. He preferred not to think about the kind of animals Hermione would use as guards in her mind.

"This is what your mind looks like?" Ron asked, awe in his voice, and Hermione grinned. She obviously enjoyed this change of lecturing very much, Harry thought.

"No. this is the way I _visualize _my mind," She corrected. "That's a very different thing and the most important point about the arts of the mind. Your mind is never what you think it to be. But at the same time, it is absolutely _everything_ you want it to be."

"And so you made your mind into a maze?" Ron asked, clearly not believing that of all the choices in the world Hermione could have decided on a lot of hedges to represent her thoughts."

"A hedge maze is damn hard to cross," Harry commented, remembering his own experiences. "And I don't think that Hermione put things as harmless as blast ended skrewts in there."

Hermione nodded. "The maze is part of my defences. It's the buildings you can partly see that contain my thoughts, memories and knowledge. Take a look."

And again, the strange gesture of her fingers whisked them away, but it was only a moment before Harry regained his footage and found himself standing in front of a large mansion, or rather palace, smaller than Hogwarts but adorned with a grace and elegance that looked altogether feminine, in a luxuriously grand way.

"Wow," Harry whispered, not finding a word that would better describe what he saw.

"Valencay, a chateau in France," Hermione said. "Or rather my mental reproduction. It is the palace of memory I built over the last year. Let's enter."

She stepped towards the huge double doors and threw them open with another gesture of her index finger. Slowly, sharing a look of wonder, Ron and Harry followed her into the entrance hall.

It was a library.

Or, rather, it was _the _library, a place only a true booklover like Hermione could have envisioned, a place impossible to build save as a castle in the mind, where the laws of nature had no power.

The room was huge, much larger than the whole building had appeared from the outside, and still Harry could see many doors leading from this room to other chambers that were probably as large as this one.

And everywhere, there were books. Shelves and shelves of them, reaching up to the high ceiling and down to the floor. Harry saw no ladders or galleries helping to reach them, but supposed that things like these weren't necessary inside the mind. Heaps of books were piled on the floor and around desks of differing proportions, and some were lying open on arm chairs or lecterns. There had to be ten times the books of Hogwarts library in here, and this was only one room!

"As you see, I decided to visualize thoughts, memories and facts in book form," Hermione explained. "Not surprising, really. A few events and emotions are visualized as paintings or statues," She pointed towards the works of art scattered through the room, which Harry hadn't even noticed in his book-induced shock. "But those are an exception.

"This palace consists of different rooms, all of them referring to a certain area of knowledge, a part of my life or my memories. This room is the general knowledge that I need to access often and fast. The less frequent a memory needs to be replayed or a fact needs to be used, the farther away from here it is. There is also a cellar in which the most dangerous things are hidden."

She waited for a moment, as if she was expecting any questions from the two visitors of her mind who were still standing in the middle of the room, staring at the thousands, no, millions of books around them.

"Clusters of books on the floor represent projects I am working on at the moment, and open books are things I am using right now, like my Occlumency skills that were necessary to bring you here. While the books themselves remain, the space around you changes according to my outer circumstances. This is the way I prefer my mind, but when I am acting like an innocent school mode…"

For a moment, the world around them flickered and then returned into focus, only to present them with pink walls and a light blue ceiling. Harry looked down at the floor and saw pictures that reminded him of the Cinderella-movie he had seen as a child.

"Whereas when I am working outside the school…" Again reality flickered and the building around them changed into a cold structure built of glass and steel, with dark greys and reds dominating the scene. "My mind palace adapts to the situation. Some rooms will vanish underground in the different modes, and the only thing that won't change are the contents of this first, main room. That, and my trapdoor."

Hermione pointed to the floor of the now returned French chateau and they saw the faint outline of a trap door in front of them. "My last hiding place if an attack should ever overwhelm me."

She fell silent for a moment, and Harry, watching her profile in the golden light of her artificial sky, wondered what she was thinking about, if she was wondering when this attack would come and how she would survive it.

"Now, if you want to organise your minds in the way necessary for your Legilimency training," She then continued, all traces of thoughtfulness suddenly replaced by her pose of a teacher. "The first things you will have to do is learn to visualize your thoughts and the way they occur. It might help you to choose a place where you put them, like I did with Valencay, or if you imagine them as a series of pictures. I have organised some theoretical works on this matter, and once you have read them, you should be able to reach that point in meditation…"

Harry rolled his eyes as he saw a grin spreading on Ron's face. _There goes his imagination_, He thought. _I would be very surprised if his mind didn't resemble a Quidditch field before long, with memories simply being thrown through hoops and left to rot._

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A/N: Here we go. A bit quiet this chapter, but it contains many facts necessary for the developments soon to come. My apologies again for the unbelievably long delay, and I promise faster updates in the future (but don't expect me to throw out chapters on a weekly basis for the next months!). 

Valencay is a French chateau. It belonged to Charles Maurice de Talleyrand Périgord, who was an ingenious statesman and diplomat before, during and after the French Revolution, one of the few who survived that time with their power and body intact. Thus it is perhaps no accident that Hermione chose his chateau above all others?

The palace of memory is a mnemo-technique developed by medieval monks. It is basically about what Hermione said: You imagine a room inside your mind, and in this room you place artefacts connected to certain memories and thought. If you are a master in this technique, it allows you to examine, store and re-combine thoughts and memories at your will. Ingenious thing, that!

Let me remind you that your questions will be answered in my life journal, where you will also find update information and general thoughts of this talkative author. Review!


	58. La Belle Dame Sans Merci

**La Belle Dame Sans Merci**

The clearing Severus had apparated to seemed to be in the middle of a forest as deep and huge as the Forbidden Forest of Hogwarts. Using a detection spell, Severus found that to his left, right and back no human life could be found for several miles. Opposite him, however, at the other end of the clearing, stood a house.

Severus grimaced as he took its looks and structures in. As so many organisations did, the aurors usually placed their safe houses in the middle of nowhere, hoping to minimize the danger of somebody stumbling over it by accident.

Of course, accident would bring no one here, but if any wizard ever entered this clearing, he would almost automatically investigate this strange little cottage with the strong wards and muggle-repellent charms.

Hiding something within the woods and hoping no one would see it wasn't Severus' idea of invisibility.

But for one morning it would do. There were only the three auror representatives inside whose specifications had already been given to him, and none of his spells and charms could detect any trap or safety breach.

Severus flicked his wand, sending a message to Tonks and Albus that apparation was clear, then dismantled the double glamour he had placed on his face and outer appearance.

When he was finished, the double pops belonging to Tonks and the Headmaster told him that his party had arrived fully.

"What a nice little house," Albus announced cheerily. "This is just the right place for a talk between friends!"

Tonks snorted. "Friends," She repeated sarcastically. "That word tells me you never met John Malone in your life, Albus."

"Our liaison officer doesn't seem to be your auror of choice, Tonks," Severus' silky voice commented. "Incompetent?"

"Less that than impertinent," She answered quietly. "I don't know how he does it, but he manages to piss everybody off in the first three minutes of meeting him. It's a gift, really."

"How lucky," Albus said. "I always try to meet as many gifted people as possible. They make such interesting acquaintances." The look he gave Tonks was maddeningly cheerful.

_Talk about strategy_, Severus thought, finding it hard not to let his amusement show. With Albus' madness tuned to the fullest, Tonks' hair alternating between neon red and green, and his dark, billowing robes and forgiving face, they had to make a rather irritating little group.

Irritating enough to get what they wanted and keep the aurors on their toes.

"Are we ready, then?" Albus inquired, still in his mad-but-happy voice, and Severus expected him to burst into the Mad Hatter's song any moment.

"Quite ready," He answered curtly. "Tonks?"

She nodded cheerfully. They had gone over their strategies again and again during the last days, and she was clearly looking forward to what they were about to do. "Let's go!"

Severus scowled at her and she grinned back, completely unconcerned. _Hermione has ruined my reputation_, He thought for a moment, then replaced the scowl with an icy smile. Tonks' grin vanished as she looked up at him, and her steps faltered. _Then again, perhaps not._

Both groups knew of the presence of the other one, but still Albus knocked politely and waited until the rough door of the cottage was opened to them. In the doorframe stood a man that Severus disliked immediately. His rough brown hair was cut very short and his blue, watery eyes reminded him of Peter Pettigrew. His face was very red and his thick neck and very muscled arms suggested a closer relationship to apes than most people could claim these days.

Surprisingly enough, Severus found as his eyes flickered towards Tonks and he saw her hair blink violently, his dislike for once seemed to be shared by his more amiable colleagues. This had to be Malone, then.

Malone took his time with greeting him. Instead, his eyes travelled slowly over Tonks body, resting on her breasts a bit too long to be accidental. He then turned to Severus, pointedly ignoring everything but his left arm where the Dark Mark lay hidden under layers of cloth. Last, he directed his gaze towards Albus, took in his brightly coloured robes and long beard, and let a mocking smile graze his lips for a moment.

Tonks was right, Severus thought as he watched the man back, letting _his _eyes rest on the small bulge above his belt that showed him Mr Malone hadn't taken the physical exercise of his entire body as seriously as that of his arms.

Malone was indeed the type to piss off everyone in the first few minutes. But he had not bothered to refine his natural talent into an art, as Severus had. He looked up into watery blue, angry eyes, and cocked a mocking eyebrow.

"_Auror_ Malone," He asked, lending his words a sceptical undertone that showed all too clearly his doubt that a man of such physical stature would qualify as an auror.

The red face reddened even more, and Malone lowered his chin like an angry bull ready to attack.

"Yes," He more growled than said, obviously expecting a degrading comment. Instead, Severus nodded, and smirked. He was a master smirker, as Hermione had told him so often, and the gesture didn't fail him now.

Had he been alone, the situation would have escalated to a duel right here and now, ending their negotiations before they had a chance to begin. But he wasn't alone, and Albus stepped in exactly a moment before Malone's aggressiveness could turn to action.

"Charmed," He announced, walked forward and grasped Malone's hand, pumping it up and down cheerily. "I am always glad to meet a man who values fashion as much as I do. Most of my colleagues do not possess a hint of interest in the fine arts of colours."

He half turned towards Severus with a reproachful glance.

Malone, realizing only belatedly that the mad old man seemed to have mistaken his smile for a compliment, was caught headway between two conflicting emotions – anger towards Severus and embarrassment towards Albus. It seemed too much for him, and for a moment Severus expected him to simply shut down and reboot, but at exactly the moment when Malone's confusion had grown to its height, Tonks stepped forward.

"Malone," She greeted him curtly. "Lead on. We do not have the whole morning for this."

Probably for the first time in a decade, Malone obeyed the order of someone who wasn't his direct commander. While he led them through a narrow corridor into a large room that had been hastily fashioned into an office, Severus could see his irritation grow. With a bit of luck, it would take him half the meeting to understand what had happened right now.

_Sometimes, I love Albus, I really do_.

With confusion still evident in his face, Malone stepped to the side, thus granting them the view of the room's other occupants. There was a white haired man with a welcoming smile that dissolved his face into a hundred wrinkles, probably Mullberry, the senior auror with whom Severus had conferred via owl post, and a woman in her forties, looking very professional in her striped robes and costume.

_Amanda Triple_, Severus thought, his mind racing with the implications and possibilities her presence suggested to him. _Rufus Scrimgeour's personal secretary-asistant. My my, we seem to be quite important._

Once the lengthy procedure of greetings and introductions was over, their hosts led them to a rectangular table around which chairs were arranged, three on each side. Mullberry settled in the middle chair with his back to the window and Triple took the chair to his left, which left the place nearest to the door to Malone.

To the aurors' obvious surprise, Albus chose the chair to the right, opposite to Malone, and left the position of honour in the middle to Tonks. In Albus' view of the world it was quite sensible – Tonks would be responsible for further contacts between the aurors and the Order, after all, but from their looks it was apparent that the other group had expected Albus, as the leader of the Order and oldest – not to mention most powerful – among them, to take command.

One more thing to unsettle them. The more the merrier.

"Well then," Mullberry finally opened the official part of the meeting. "Before we begin to discuss the finer points of our future cooperation, let me reiterate my pleasure that this meeting has finally come to pass. I am sure you are all aware of the importance of unity in face of the dreadful danger He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named and his wretched followers pose, and I…"

He faltered, probably because he had noticed the mocking smile that curled around Severus' lips like a lazy, satisfied cat. Malone's eyes, still rooted to Severus' left lower arm, was enough to bring the message home. Severus found that he quite liked Malone, as long as the other man kept silent – there was no better tool than the idiocy of others to bring one's point along.

"And I…" Mullberry's eyes darted to Tonks, but the simpering look with which the young auror clung to his lips only served to heighten his confusion. He finally turned to Albus, who nodded, one senior wizard to another, and smiled indulgently.

"Quite right, I must say. Couldn't agree more. Now, as to these finer points…"

And with that, Albus took over. One had to hand it to him – once he had commenced talking it was virtually impossible to stop him again. Not that he interrupted people or ignored what they said, his was rather a way of integrating whatever they said into his own structure of thoughts and sentences, until every dialogue seemed to become his very own monologue, with the other talking persons reduced to the role of explorers in the mighty caves of Albus Dumbledore's thoughts.

Usually, they were even flattered with this role.

They had a wide range of topics to discuss on this first meeting that would hopefully lead to a successful cooperation of the Auror Headquarters and the Order, and many of these topics were difficult to handle.

While the aurors didn't mind being handed information on attacks and possible Death Eater locations by the Order, they _did_ mind that Tonks would be the only accepted liaison officer for the time being. They gladly accepted the offer of learning the mechanisms of the triggered Obliviate, but the idea that no auror would be allowed to enter Order Headquarters without having been subjected to that spell, linked with a Fidelius placed by the Headmaster or Severus himself, held less appeal to them.

They were outraged that the long range plans of the Order would remain a secret, Obliviate-spells or no.

But in the end, with a lot of hair flashing from Tonks, a few _really _confusing but nevertheless darkly foreshadowing comments from Albus and more than a few caustic remarks about the aurors' traditional disability to handle secrets and to act according to secrecy statues, along with quite some less than subtle threats by the Spymaster, they came along nicely.

At the end of their three-hours-negations, the Order representatives held the treatise of their dreams, and the aurors where forced to stick to it.

One look at Amanda Triple told Severus that she was _not amused_ about the negotations' outcome. Not at all.

"One last point, before we conclude this meeting," She finally announced, her eyes glittering.

_Oh puur-lease,_ Severus thought, not sure whether he was more irritated with her lack of subtlety or her firm belief that she could really spring a trap on them.

"Yes, my dear," Albus said and beamed at her. For a moment, her face twitched, and Severus knew that she was weighing the personal satisfaction it would mean to bark at the more than irritating man opposite her against the dangers of angering one of the most powerful wizards of this – and the last – century. Power, as always with these ministry dimwits, won.

"It concerns the original reason why this cooperation came into being," She continued with a sour little smile. "With the legalizing of your Order and Minister Fudge's… questionable behaviour during that event, reported by two of our aurors."

"Certainly my dear," Albus' beaming was the equivalent of a halogen lamp. Her smile that of a very large lemon.

"While our aurors were able to report on the Minister's behaviour in detail, they were rather unable to inform us what had caused it, except for some vague reference to a…" She consulted her notes and frowned. "Young girl."

The confusion spreading rapidly on both Albus' and Tonks' face was just perfect – honest and direct, but just a shade too much to be real. While Malone was too dense to notice anything and Mullberry was still trying to catch up with the strange course their negotiations had taken, Triple obviously noticed that they knew what she was talking about, and wanted her to know that she knew it.

Her smile became a wagonload of lemons.

"While we of course do not wish to pry into your internal affairs," The glittering of her eyes telling them all that that was exactly what she wanted to do, very badly indeed. "We couldn't help wondering about this strange… selective amnesia."

She fixed Albus with an inquisitve stare, but the old wizard kept us his confused act just as Tonks did, and so, inevitably, she turned to Snape.

Who smiled at her. Brightly. "Really?" He asked, seemingly interested, widening his smile so that his canines were exposed. "Well," He purred, and thought he heard a sound very much like a whimper coming from Mullberry. "It _is_ good to hear that you care about such strange incidents among your men."

Her gaze sharpened at his words, and she dropped the smile altogether. "We were wondering about the _reason_ for it," She explained, her voice a barely concealed razor.

Severus shrugged, shared a short look with Albus, then stood, suddenly towering over the seating aurors, his black robes giving him the appearance of a dementor.

"I would wonder about that, too," He agreed, then shrugged.

"It's probably a lack in their training," He suggested mildly, with just a hint of mockery dancing behind his words. "It's shocking how many people have a memory like a sieve these days."

Just on key, Albus and Tonks rose as well, and, stepping away from the table, bowed as one, before they left the hut with quick, determined steps and apparated away before Amanda Triple could recover from her outrage.

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It was six o'clock when Severus finally returned to the Order's Headquarters. He had followed their meeting with the aurors up with a few visits at safe houses and his spies' dens, along with a lot of random apparating, portkeying and floo-traveling that ensured his steps would be untraceable. While the day had been more than successful so far, he was glad to discard his sombre outer robes and enter his office in the usual combination of trousers and shirt he wore these days.

A pot of tea was waiting for him on his desk, probably left by Jane.

He smiled. It was so much like Jane to have remembered that he wouldn't enter his chambers tonight. She had always been like this – rough on the outside, caring on the inside.

She was well able to never speak a friendly word to you, but when the need arose, she would fight for her loved ones like a lioness.

Much like his other lioness, Hermione, he mused, and the thought returned him to the business at hand. Leaving his office through a door concealed by glamours to everyone but him, Albus and Hermione, he entered his personal owlery in search for the parcel he was expecting.

There wasn't a package from Plangett, the forger he had commissioned with the fake prophecy. Nor was there a note by Hermione, informing him that she had retrieved the parcel and taken it with her.

Severus frowned. This wasn't according to his plan, which had, in fact, foreseen the arrival of the prophecy yesterday evening. And if the prophecy didn't arrive soon, that meant trouble.

Of a more than serious kind.

Severus' frown deepened as he left the owlery and crossed his office to the main room, where the fireplace with the general outside-connection was situated.

Tonight was the night of Voldemort's summer ball, the night they had chosen for the fake prophecy to be handed to the Dark Lord. And while they had staged a scene between Harry and Hermione more than a week ago, a scene with her convincing him to put the prophecy in a pensieve and let her view it, they had had no chance to enact the additional elements necessary to make up a believable sequence of events.

Hermione needed the memory of the prophecy in her mind, the fake prophecy, and she needed a plausible explanation for its transference into the storage crystal she would present Voldemort with.

Normally, this wouldn't have posed a problem to either of them. A legilimens of their level could easily create or change memories, or assemble a new memory from different elements, like a cutter would create a movie from the material he possessed. But with this memory, such a technique was simply too risky.

While Voldemort had no reason to doubt Hermione's integrity these days, with an event of this importance he would scrutinize every scrap of memory connected to it closely, and every flaw, every little mistake in them, would lead to consequences of the severest kind.

So she couldn't simply invent the memory, even assembling it like she would do was risky. And now it seemed that the hours needed to prepare a plausible sequence of events, the hours needed to watch the prophecy, examine the crystal and built a new one, would be too few.

Glad that no Order member had yet arrived for their nightly meeting, Severus lit a fire with a flick of his wrist and tossed a handful of floo powder into the flames.

It took Plangett more than a minute to enter the room where the impatient head of Severus Snape was resting in the flames, and when he came, the nervous wringing of his hands told Severus more than he wanted to know.

"I'm sorry, Severus," Plangett told him. "But the crystal I used to store the prophecy shattered, and I am just now repeating the process. I don't know what happened, but I will need at least two more hours to finish it!"

Severus had to close his eyes as he felt rage welling up inside him. _It wouldn't be wise to kill him now_, He advised himself reigning his anger in with a merciless snap of his mind. _But perhaps… later…_

When he reopened his eyes, this promise for later seemed to stand in his face all too clearly, for Plangett gulped and retreated a few steps to the back of the room.

"Let me get this clear, Plangett," Severus said, very softly and quietly, but the velvety quality of his voice served only to heighten Plangett's fear. Rightly so.

"If this prophecy isn't ready at 7.30, when I will call again, I will make personally sure that you have no chance to disappoint me ever again. You know of the importance of this crystal, and if you destroy my plans with your incompetence, you, your wife and your children will live to regret it. But not very long. Is that understood?"

Frantic nodding was the only answer this calm statement received, and the last thing Severus saw before retreating from the fire was Plangett's behind, hurrying away from the room faster than this particular body part had probably moved in more than a decade.

But Severus took no satisfaction from it. His steps were steady when he rose from the fireplace, re-entered his office and scribbled a short note, which he tied to the leg of an owl. The tea on his desk remained untouched as he threw himself into the impossible task of ensuring that their plan – and Hermione – would survive the night.

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The moment Harry entered the Headquarters, he knew something was wrong. One look at Moody's, Ron's and Tonks's faces told him that they had no idea what had happened, but the muted atmosphere of the room, the serious face of Dumbledore and the open door to Severus' office, through which they could see their Spymaster sitting at his desk, scribbling furiously, spoke for itself.

Slowly, he approached the Headmaster. "Professor," He inquired quietly. "What…"

But the golden glow of one of the tapestries made him stop. Draco stepped through, disoriented for a second as everyone, except Hermione and Snape, who seemed to even enjoy this method of travelling, was, then he noticed Harry standing beside the Headmaster and walked quickly towards them.

"How did…" He began, only to stop abruptly when a hand descended on his shoulder.

"Draco," Severus said, his hand resting there a moment longer than necessary. "Come with me, please. There is something we have to discuss."

Draco looked up to the Spymaster then paled slightly at the serious look on his face, but he nodded and followed Severus into his office without another word. With a decisive click, the door closed behind them.

"What happened?" Harry asked again, suddenly frantic with worry. "Is Draco in danger?"

"Nothing of the kind, Harry," Dumbledore replied in his usual benevolent tone, but the way his eyes darted through the room told Harry that he wasn't really concentrating on what he said. "Now if you will excuse me, there is something important I have to…"

And off he drifted, to join Severus and Draco in the other room. This time, the closing of the door had a distinctly ominous quality.

Harry was Slytherin enough by now not to stare at the entrance to Severus' office too obviously, but while he conversed with other members of the Order and greeted Ron, Mr and Mrs Weasley and the twins when they stepped into Headquarters, his mind was fixed on that door, constantly, and all the time he was wondering what was going on in there.

Finally, after Harry had fought down the impulse to simply walk over and enter the office at least a dozen times, the door opened again and out strode Severus, not sparing a glance towards the room's other occupants.

Before anyone could approach him and inquire about this strange change of routine, he had opened a floo connection and his head vanished into the green flames. After a moment, his left hand followed, only to be drawn back from the fire a moment later, now carrying a small back of dark velvet.

While he extinguished the flames and carefully examined the thing inside the velvet box, his back to the others, Dumbledore ushered them to their chairs in uncharacteristic hate.

Walking to his usual place, Harry tried to meet Draco's gaze, but his Slytherin friend, paler than usual and lips thin, averted his eyes.

Harry could feel an unpleasant churning built in his stomach. Whatever was going on here, it wasn't good at all.

There were no greetings this time, only Dumbledore settling into his chair and Severus coming to stand at his place at the other side of the table.

Carefully, their Spymaster placed the bag on the polished wood in front of him.

"This," He told them, his voice expressionless. "Is the forged prophecy."

Seeing the unrest among them, he nodded and continued: "Yes. I know. That's not according to plan. It should be with Hermione already, who is scheduled to leave Hogwarts in less than ten minutes. But unfortunately our forger didn't deliver on time. And now we have the problem of constructing a plausible sequence of memories."

"Explain," The rough voice of Moody demanded, and Severus, still standing at his place, nodded again.

"Originally," He said. "We had planned for Hermione to acquaint herself with the method of storing Plangett used and letting her build the same crystal again. She could have melted that memory with the one we already staged, and would thus have been able to explain to Voldemort how she acquired the memory and put it in this form. But as things are now, we do not have the time for this approach. Which is why we will change the story. Instead of building the crystal by herself, she will tell the Dark Lord that _Draco _did it. Then we only have to act out the prophecy's transfer from him to her."

He stopped for a moment, waiting for questions, but none came.

"But this must be done now, and flawless. We do not have time for a second try."

"And Hermione agreed to this?" Harry asked, knowing well how much Hermione disliked spontaneous changes in plan.

"She didn't disagree," Severus answered quietly, and something in his face warned Harry to ask no further.

Unfortunately, it didn't warn the others.

"I don't understand," Molly Weasley said. "Surely you discussed this plan with her and determined that there's no other way?"

"Hermione is preparing herself," Severus said icily. "Before an event as important as this she sees no one, least of all me. She will come here, take the prophecy and leave again without any of us addressing her."

"But why?" Tonks enquired, obviously not noticing the huge "Don't go there" sign that had appeared in Snape's suddenly forbidding eyes.

"Because this is no play or carnival, Tonks," He barked. "This is a matter of life and death, and we can't risk her concentration being broken for one second."

Molly Weasley shook her head. "I have seen you two work together," She announced decisively, and Harry wanted to bang his head against the table in irritation. It seemed that while her opinion could change, the way she ploughed on no matter what the situation seemed inbred to most Weasleys. "If anything, you heighten her concentration. Why don't you see her before such an important event? It would give her strength!"

"She doesn't want me to see the things she does to prepare herself," He answered curtly. "It is better that way. You will see why the moment she enters."

He traded a look with Draco, then moved his head towards the other end of the room, and the Slytherin nodded silently, following the Spy Master's direction without a look back, taking the bag with the forged prophecy with him.

"Why is Malfoy giving it to her?" Moody asked, still not completely trusting the Slytherin.

"Because he is the only one she can safely take it from," Severus explained, his tone suggesting to those who had studied with him that he would lose his patience, and quite soon. But Moody had never been one of his students, and so he simply raised an eyebrow and looked at him, silently demanding an explanation.

Snape sighed, but gave in without further argument.

"Hermione will have to record these images, for the Dark Lord will certainly search her mind thoroughly in a case of such importance. Draco is the only "loyal Death Eater" among us, and, besides, apart from me only he can manage the necessary attitude."

A sharp gesture of his hand stopped Tonks from interrupting him further. "She will come every minute now," He told them, a hint of nervousness in his voice. " Normally I wouldn't allow you to watch, but we haven't time to argue the point now, so I will only tell you once again to be completely quiet. Our plan depends on this one, undisturbed memory. I will raise the magical barrier separating this part of the room from the other one. She won't be able to see or hear us, but don't interrupt them, whatever may happen."

Molly Weasley looked as if she would argue the point, but Ron, who had obviously learned his lesson by now, moved over to his mother, took her arm and started whispering in her ear, until she nodded reluctantly.

The sound of the opening door distracted Harry from his fellow Order members, but even though he had expected her, it took him a moment to recognize Hermione, and then only Snape's warning glare stopped the gasp that was building in his throat.

Never, in all the roles she had played, not even as Martha Haritt, had Hermione looked so transformed to him, so completely different from his Hermione in all aspects. Apart from Voldemort himself, it was the most frightening thing he had ever seen.

"Draco," She greeted the Slytherin standing by the fireplace. Even her voice had changed, a strange mixture of aggression and submission, dark and dangerous like her eyes.

"Do you have it?" She asked now, her voice a low, sensual purr that sent lust burning through his groins. _This is Hermione_, he told himself firmly, but when she walked, no, glided towards Draco, and her cloak opened to reveal an impossibly tight dress that seemed to cling to her every curve, a cleavage so low that her breasts seem to topple out of it any moment, he couldn't help a hot blush forming on his cheek. No. This wasn't Hermione.

"Of course."

Harry's head whipped around towards Draco, and, judging from the movement around him, not only his head did. Draco's voice had changed completely in those short minutes since he had left the table, and, Harry noticed as he took in his appearance, so had the rest of him.

Instead of the slightly arrogant but open and friendly Draco he had come to know in the course of the last months, the Malfoy was back. But there was nothing funny or overdone in him, this time. Now that he didn't feel the need to prove himself any longer, he surpassed even his father in his quiet elegance and aura of power.

Only now that he was holding himself like a king did Harry notice how tall he was, how well defined his body and legs. His nose was turned up slightly, as if he was smelling something rotten, but the gesture that had looked stupid on his mother fitted him perfectly, and so convincing was his expression that Harry nearly moved his head and sniffed his arm pits testingly.

He was a pureblood prince, and in the days of old, they would have worshipped him as a god.

Now he smiled, a dark, leering smile that only heightened the danger emanating from him, and raised his hand towards her. And as if it was the most natural thing in the world, Hermione curtsied deeply before him, taking his hand and kissing the large seal ring on his middle finger.

Eyes directed upwards through thick lashes, she watched him greedily, a dangerous smile on her face that bared her teeth. She, too, looked like a princess to Harry, a goddess of darkness and secret, forbidden desires.

"Oh, Draco, don't make me wait," She pleaded.

Draco chuckled darkly. "Say please, mudblood," He demanded, and she rose, slightly rubbing her breasts against him while she slithered along his body, till her ruby-wet lips came to rest besides his ear.

"Give it to me," She purred into his ear, a low invitation. "Please." Harry felt his knees go weak at this last word, but Draco didn't even seem to notice the sensual overload of her tongue and lips against his ear.

Carefully, he slipped a hand into his pocket and retrieved the crystal in its silver bag.

"Here it is," He said, turning the crystal in the firelight and watching the light dance across the room. "The downfall of Potter and all his mudblood loving friends."

Hermione laughed delightedly. The sound reminded Harry of Bellatrix Lestrange somehow, but where madness had rang in Lestrange's throated laugh, Hermione's was tainted with power and lust.

"Your father will be proud, Draco," She purred. "As will be our master. They will repay you richly."

"And I can just imagine how they will repay you," Draco murmured wickedly, trailing the line of her cleavage with his index finger. "Haven't I earned a little payment from you, too?"

She smiled at him to that, a dark, feral grin, and leaned into his touch until the palm of his hand connected with her bosom.

"I'm your father's bitch, and the Dark Lord's toy, Draco," She answered, just enough regret showing in voice. "If you want a go with me, you'll have to ask them. Though if they allowed it, I'd be… most happy to oblige." And she ground her hips against him in a more than suggestive movement, before she pocketed crystal quickly.

Harry looked away, no longer able to watch the woman that normally was his best friend. His gaze darted from one Order member to the next. They all showed signs of shock, of pity or revulsion, only Snape's face was as unreadable as always.

_Why did he make them watch this?_ Harry wondered, deeply disturbed by the display Hermione was forced to give them all. _Why not let her do this in private? It must be terribly humiliating for her!_

But was it more humiliating than behaving this way among the Death Eaters, who would accept her open invitations all too happily, all the while scorning her for the impurity of her blood?

_He wants us to learn our lesson_, Harry realized. _He wants us all to understand what she is capable of, and what she is going through for our sake, so that no one will criticize her ever again_.

His eyes glided over Dumbledore's face, weary and old, over Molly Weasley's wide open, shocked eyes and Tonks' angry expression, more furious than anything he had ever seen in her. Even Moody, normally not to be touched by anything, had averted his eyes, and the slight blushing of his cheeks spoke of his shame.

Draco's voice tore him away from his thoughts.

"Send our Master my humble greetings," The Slytherin called after Hermione, who retreated towards the door, her invisibility cloak already covering half her body.

Her throaty laugh, full of promises, reddened Harry's cheeks.

"Oh, but I know exactly how humble you are, Draco," She whispered, and glided out.

Severus gave her a minute to leave the vicinity of the room, before he disposed of the magical barrier and walked over to Draco, who stood facing the fireplace, his head bowed and resting on his arms that clung desperately to the marble.

As he felt the older man approaching, he whirled around, his face a mask of shame and weariness. A few months ago, Harry would have hated him for this whole, sick display, but now he could only feel painful sympathy. It had been bad enough to watch, but to actively participate?

"You did well," Their Spy Master said silently, and rested a hand on the young man's shoulder.

"Did I?" Draco asked and gave a bitter laugh. "I feel sick every time I have to pull off this show."

"I know. I did, too," Snape answered, reassurance warming his voice. "Do you want to rest a bit? It will take hours until she returns, and you look very tired."

"How could I rest, when she is going there, grovelling before the Dark Lord and serving my father," Draco asked, his voice bitter, his face white with exhaustion.

For a moment, Snape's mask slipped and Harry could see the Spymaster's true feelings, normally hidden away under so many layers of stone that no one ever knew: Worry, care and a raw terror for the one he loved played on his face, only to vanish a second later, replaced by cool efficiency.

"We all have our part to play, Draco," He said, his voice slightly hoarse. "No one can help her now. She will get through it, as she always did."

The tone of his voice made Draco look up to his mentor. And Harry saw in the slight widening of his eyes that he understood. Softly, he placed a hand on the older man's shoulder, only for a moment. Then he nodded.

"Thank you, Severus," He whispered and left the room with hasty steps.

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**A/N: **The Mad Hatter's song is, of course, the song said Hatter likes to sing in „Alice in Wonderland" – I simply love that book!

Two chapters in under a week – what a good little author I've been! Now be good little readers, too, and review!


	59. A Jewel in the Crown

**A Jewel in the Crown**

The ball was held at Jameson's manor, and when Hermione popped into existence at the apparition point, the prophecy cradled in her arms like a saviour child, the servants bowed low and one of them led her to the entrance of the large house without a word.

From their faces and actions it was clear that they didn't know her identity. All they saw was a young, richly dressed woman whose face was hidden by an intricately carved and ornamented mask, a piece so beautiful and fragile that it hardly resembled the Death Eater masks they were so used to.

But it wasn't only the mask and the privileges connected to it that made them bow so low and avert their eyes in respect. The way she moved tonight, the tilt of her head, the gestures of her pale, delicate hands, spoke of power.

And no one dared flirt with a power he didn't possess in the presence of the Dark Lord.

She didn't thank the servant who opened the huge entrance doors for her with a flick of his wand, her eyes darting coldly over his bowing form as she passed him by with regal steps.

Servants were beneath her notice this night, and although they might whisper about her in the safety of the servants' quarters, might trade rumours about the new queen of darkness that had risen so swiftly, they would never dare raise their eyes to her.

As she traversed the large marble entrance hall on her way to the ballroom, she sank even deeper into the person she had to be tonight – the Ice Queen, the powerful huntress of hidden weaknesses. Her eyes behind the silver mask were calm, and her breathing steady.

After the hours of preparation she had undergone, even she believed that she wanted to be here, that this place and these people were all she had ever desired to reach.

Darkness was resting in her heart and pride dancing in the corners of her mouth as she entered the ballroom.

She didn't stop in the doorway, for that would have turned the attention right towards her, but walked on inconspicuously, like a guest who had just returned from a little business outside. She stopped near a group of men who were deeply in on their conversation – trading yarns about muggle hunt, it seemed - and let her eyes travel slowly across the ballroom.

It was all she could do to hide the disgust that rose in her mind and stomach at this sight.

Most of these men – and women, there were much more of them in the Outer Circle – were idiots, oblivious to the intricate dances of power and control that went on around them.

None of them wore signature dampers on their hands like she did, and few had even bothered with gloves, which meant that every person in the room could not only make out their identity wit a few well placed spells – which wasn't necessary, by the way, as they hadn't bothered with glamours either – but that every wizard around could gather tiny parts of their essence and use it against them later.

Hermione on the other hand wore not only one but several glamours, despite the mask she was entitled to wear due to her Inner Circle status. She had changed the colour and texture of her hair, the form of her eyes and her mouth. She had even added a crooked tooth on the left upper side. Soft freckles dusted her neck, cleavage and arms, and her feet looked slightly smaller than they were.

Small changes, all of them, changes that no mediocre observer would even notice, but if you added them to her arrogant posture and her regal body language, no one could ever guess that she was still a school girl, not to mention Hermione Granger.

Her efforts were lost on these mongrels, she thought with a disdainful curl of her lips, but one could never know – one bright mind in the midst of these morons could be enough to cause a world of problems. And the Inner Circle would notice, and approve, and their evaluation of her abilities would climb another few degrees.

Slowly, her eyes moved from guest to guest, fixing their identities in her mind or clues to their families, evaluating their money and power among the group. Many of them were drinking alcohol and had been doing so for quite some time, others were stuffing themselves with the excellent food Jameson had provided.

And they really thought that this evening was about them.

She could respect some of the more powerful Death Eaters on some level, despite their cruelty, because their cunning and abilities were something she could learn from, but these masses, these idiots that believed themselves the purer, superior part of the wizarding world created nothing but a feeling of disgust in her.

As she stood in her corner, ignored due to her body language and the miniscule notice-me-not charm she had applied – too weak for even the most powerful wizard here to notice it – she watched alliances form and break up, people enjoying their own feeling of importance and other people grovelling to those who could further their success.

She watched plans unfold, treacherous questions being asked and hushed answers being given, rumours travel across the room and worry some, delight others. _What a coarse play_, she thought, weary with their lack of subtlety. _What bad actors they are! I wouldn't pay for this if it was real theatre._

"Now, what have we here," A silky, refined voice suddenly whispered, and she did Lucius the favour to look surprised, although she had noticed his movements towards her for at least two minutes. "Skulking in the corners, Hermione? Watching your fellow Death Eaters?"

"Oh, I am just admiring the chandelier," She answered innocently and let her eyes travel upwards to the monster of fake crystal, magical candles and glittering glass that their host had decided to install.

Lucius chuckled appreciatively and she allowed a small smile to dance on her lips for a second. She knew of Lucius' impeccable taste concerning antiquities. And of his belief that no mansion could ever rival his own.

Tonight, she noticed as she let her eyes travel adoringly over his rich robes and his shimmering hair, tonight he was the civilized Malfoy, with all his animal instincts, his violence and madness tightly under lock and key.

Tonight he was the epitome of pureblood manners, and he would thus treat her with civility, like a man would a beautiful woman, and a bit of condescension since she couldn't ever equal him on this stage. She had dirty blood after all.

But still he offered her his hand and she took it with a slight, graceful movement of her head that had her heavy locks caressing her neck.

"We are gathering now, my dear," He whispered, his cold lips brushing the tender skin beneath her ear lobes and she shivered, allowing him to think that it was in pleasure. "May I accompany you?"

They smiled and whispered while they slowly walked across the room, breaking up factions and parties on their way. Lucius had chosen a path that led them through the middle of the room, and the Outer Circle members they passed went quiet, not even pretending that they didn't watch them.

Normally, she would have thought amusedly how Draco or Harry would have commented her 'grand entrance', but tonight no thought of that kind entered her mind. Tonight, she wouldn't let her thoughts slip away from under her tight rein for a moment. Too much was at stake.

The room that would host the Inner Circle meeting was decorated in dark colours, and with a good deal more taste than the main ballroom. Hermione suspected that Lucius himself had supervised the work here, and one look at his satisfied face proved her theory right.

She took a deep breath and smiled at Lucius once more, who let go of her arm and moved to his rightful position besides the throne.

A popping sound echoed from the high ceiling and they all fell to their knees, forming a perfect circle around the throne in their glittering robes.

There was not a sound, but still Hermione and the others knew that their Lord had arrived – she could feel it in her bones, the painful clenching of her chest, the crawling of her skin that spoke of the presence of dark, dark magic.

He didn't say a word, but she knew that he watched them with greedy satisfaction, his richly dressed collection of wizard dolls, ready to move and speak and kill at his command.

"Welcome, my friends," He finally greeted them in his high, cold voice, and like the other members of the Inner Circle, Hermione ducked even lower to the ground, ducked lower and crawled forward slightly, only an inch or two.

It was the silent announcement that she had news to offer, important news.

"Tonight," He began, making no move to indicate that he had noticed her gesture. "We have gathered to celebrate our victories and our rising power. Tonight we honour the ways and traditions that make us wizards, that make us superior to the other creatures that crawl on this earth. Tonight, you will represent the power of the Dark Lord to those supporters not worthy to join this circle."

Hermione shivered with admiration and pride. _He is my master, and I am his slave_, she chanted silently, sinking deeper and deeper into the personality of Hermione the Death Eater. _I will do what must be done_.

She listened with awe to his long, winding speech during which he did not let them stand, her head so much lowered that it nearly touched the marble floor. While she waited for her Lord to acknowledge her, body and pose perfectly still, her senses went to work, gathering information and evaluating it, storing things she would have to ponder in greater detail in the hidden dungeons of her mind's cathedral.

She noticed that Gordon, who was kneeling to her left, smelled of a woman's perfume – too flowery and cheap to be used by his upper class wife. So he had found himself a new mistress? Inwardly, Hermione grinned as she remembered how jealous Angelique Gordon was.

She noticed that Voldemort's voice was slightly hoarse and even higher, that his speech was even more over the top than usual, and that he reeked of blood. Had he enjoyed his own private little torture session before the ball began? Or had the problems with his body, this perverted, artificial shell for the mind of a monster, increased?

While she kneed on the floor, her face hidden by her hair and listened, smelled and felt, she was ware of everything around her, aware like a rabbit was on an open, bare plane with no place to hide and a thousand animals surrounding.

She knew it immediately when Voldemort's eyes fell on her.

"You have news for us, Hermione?" He asked, a hint of warmth stealing into his voice and she moved her head up and down, still not rising from her prostrated position.

"I have brought you a gift, my Lord," She whispered. "A gift I have tried to attain for many months."

She paused, and felt the atmosphere in the room change, felt men shifting towards her and irritation travelling across this circle of the most powerful and ruthless men that had ever united.

What she would offer them tonight would change their world. They just didn't know it yet.

"I brought you the prophecy concerning Harry Potter, my Lord," She said and felt the room go absolutely still.

Then, she raised her head to see Voldemort smile at her.

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Harry remembered when he had last come here in the middle of the night. Back then he hadn't expected to be meeting Draco in the darkness of Severus' private gym, but now he was counting on it.

He knew that Draco would never enter the Slytherin common room in such a vulnerable state, with his feelings practically written on his face, and he had thoroughly searched Headquarters before he had come here.

He placed his palm on the dark wooden door and whispered the password, then walked up the stairs in silent determination.

He had nearly reached the top when he realized that he hadn't broken into his usual sweat. He wasn't even breathing hard. _The training must be kicking in_, he realized and felt proud for a moment.

Then he remembered the events of the night and the reasons for his coming here, and pride and satisfaction vanished abruptly.

"Draco," He called out softly the moment he had opened the door, not wanting to be the victim of a hex.

His eyes darted across the room, resting on their favourite places and finding Draco on the window seat, his knees drawn up to his chest and his arms crossed over them in a posture that tried to look defiant, but ended up lost somewhere along the way.

"Potter," Draco drawled, his voice colder than it had been for many weeks. "What do you want?"

"See how you are doing," Harry answered, walking over to Draco and sitting down at the opposite end of the window.

"Splendid," The Slytherin answered, not even bothering to hide the dead tone in his voice. "Just splendid."

He sighed, then his eyes flickered over Harry's still form. "Is Hermione back?"

Harry shook his head, his eyes travelling over Hogwarts' grounds as if in search for their friend. "Severus said not to expect her before dawn. These balls seem to be rather pompous affairs."

Draco nodded. "I know," He said. "I visited more than one."

In the silver light of the moon, Draco looked distant, colder and harder than Harry had ever seen him. There was nothing playful in him now, nothing mocking or defying.

He looked solemn, sober. Resigned.

And still that coldness lingered in his body and voice, that arrogance he had used tonight to help Hermione, that aura of power and control that had set him off from his more mundane surroundings, that had given him the authority of a prince.

Only that he didn't look in control now. Just lonely.

"Look, Draco, I know…" Harry finally said after a silence that stretched all too long to be comfortable, only to be immediately interrupted by a sharp voice brimming with tension.

"No Harry, don't," Draco hissed. "Don't give me that Gryffindor speech tonight about doing the right, not the easy thing and about the masks we all have to wear. You know what I did was monstrous and disgusting, don't deny it. Just…don't"

Harry's thoughts raced back to that event so many months ago, before Severus and Hermione had admitted their love to each other, when she had killed four Death Eaters with such cold efficiency that he had been shocked. He had thought her a monster then, and only her total breakdown in Severus' arms afterwards had made him realize his mistake.

To his own surprise, he found that he didn't feel even a hint of that shock and repulsion now, even though this situation was more than similar. Instead, he felt…proud.

Impressed by Draco's skills and his determination to use them against his own inclinations. Awed by what the Slytherin was willing to do for his friends. A bit left out perhaps, because he hadn't been able to help Hermione when she needed it.

But these thoughts wouldn't help Draco right now.

"Actually," He answered lightly, feeling Draco's surprise at his dry tone. "I wanted to tell you that I'm rather jealous. If you ever decide to use that attitude of yours, you'll be Minister of Magic in less than ten years."

"That's not funny, Harry," Draco pressed out between tightly clenched teeth, his face white and tense in the moonlight. "It's nothing to joke about!"

"So you think we can't joke about your Death Eater persona?" Harry asked, all humour fading from his voice. "That what you did was too terrible to be taken lightly? When we joke about my Boy-Who-Lived-image all the time, although it was given to me through the death of my parents? When even Hermione manages to joke about her spying now and then? When she and Snape crack jokes about Voldemort's Inner Circle? What is so terrible in your actions compared to all that?"

"That's different," Draco whispered. "You cannot compare what Hermione does or what you are to me."

"Do tell me why not," Harry said in a friendly, interested tone he had copied from Dumbledore, and Draco threw his hands up in irritation, jumped up from his seat and began to pace the room, tension screaming from every cell of his body.

"Because I'm a Malfoy!" He very nearly shouted. "I learned dark curses when you two were working hard on the ABC! That 'attitude', as you call it, has been brainwashed into me since before I could think! It's a character trait, not a bloody scar or a false identity! It's who I was taught to be!"

Harry sighed, wearied by his friend's despair and his own tiredness. Hermione had called them all a lost generation once, a generation of war. She had been right. They were all damaged, every single one of them, in such multiple ways that it hurt to even contemplate it.

Neville, with his parents caged into that tiny Hospital ward, who could give him nothing but the shiny wrapping papers of sweets. Ron, lost in a world of principles and feelings he didn't understand but followed blindly into catastrophe.

Luna, who peopled her world with imaginary creatures to explain the hate directed towards her, the incomprehensible cruelty of her peers. Ginny, still torn from her experience in the Chamber of Secrets but too stubborn to stop and heal her wounds or even acknowledge them.

And Hermione, their brilliant, cunning, beautiful spy, hurt in so many ways he couldn't even begin to understand. He himself, with nothing but his scar, his sheer dumb luck and the memory of loved ones on his hands, with a goal too far away to achieve and a pedestal waiting for him too high to climb.

They were all fucked up, everyone in their own way, and Draco, this immaculate, well bred, superior pureblood with the cunning of an old man and the soul of a wounded child, was just one of them.

He was just a part of this family of invalids. But the terrible thing about him was that he didn't even know it.

"You grew past your father's heritage, Draco," Harry said quietly, trying to convey through his words the honesty he felt, the need to show his friend that he belonged. "You are more than just that."

"And what if I'm not?" Draco shouted, too agitated to notice Harry's sadness. "I've been working for a place in that group for months, Harry, and what do they demand of me? To play the Death Eater! To be everything I've struggled to break free from! Did you see their faces when I left the room?"

He took a shuddering breath, still pacing up and down as if the world depended on it, his white hands and face glittering in the moonlight.

"It was so easy to become that person again, so god damn easy! The moment I concentrated it was all there, the arrogance, the cruelty, the malice, and I slipped into it like a second skin! And do you know what is the most terrible thing about it?" His voice had sunk to a whisper, as if he lacked the strength to continue speaking, as if all air had suddenly left his lungs.

"That for one moment I enjoyed it. The power, the control, the sheer beauty of being a Malfoy. For one moment, I didn't want it to stop. I had her kneeling before me, god damn it, had her kneeling as if she were my slave, and I enjoyed it!"

He sank to his knees then, suddenly, folding in on himself and staring into the darkness as if looking for a hidden truth.

"What kind of monster am I?" He whispered. "_Who_ am I?"

Harry felt numb, overwhelmed by this sudden outbreak, not sure what to say or do to ease the pain emanating from Draco. Hermione would have known how to react, he thought suddenly, wanting nothing more than to bolt from the room.

But still he stood, slowly, and walked over to the Slytherin sitting in the middle of the room.

"You are my friend, and Hermione's, and Severus'," He whispered, feeling terribly inadequate. One of his hands moved forward hesitatingly, touching Draco's shoulder, expecting the other to withdraw immediately, but the movement never came.

Draco just took another one of these terrible, shuddering breaths and said nothing.

"You are part of that mad, chaotic family that somehow holds everything and everyone together. You are part of what makes me survive all this, part of why Hermione goes on every single day. One of those unfortunates who actually have to make a choice about their life.

"You know, I've always thought of it as a balancing act," He continued thoughtfully, feeling Draco go still by his side, listening silently. "Between our desires, the power we can hope to gain, our abilities, and all those other things that make life so difficult. What we think is right. What we love. What we want this world to become."

He sighed. "Sometimes it's so hard to stay on the rope between power and control," He whispered, remembering the Cruciatus he had cast on Bellatrix in fifth year. Somehow he was sure that, should he try again, he would be able to execute the Curse perfectly by now. He was glad he hadn't been able to back then, but still… still… to hurt the woman who had killed Sirius…what a temptation.

"Sometimes, you know why you are doing all this, and it gives you hope and strength. But sometimes…sometimes you wonder if this is all worth it. If this world is worth rescuing. If the person we can feel inside, that strong, powerful person, that person who doesn't care about the rest isn't the one who got it all right.

"I have seen that question on Severus' face, and on Hermione's," He whispered. "I have felt that wish to let go myself. Hell, I think even Dumbledore feels it now and then. It's nothing to be ashamed of, Draco."

"How do you know that I'm like you in this, Harry?" Draco asked, his face still averted, hope and bleakness battling in his voice. "How can you be so sure that I won't lose my balance one day?"

Harry smiled. "Do you remember what you told me when I asked you the same thing about Hermione, long ago? That she cried her heart out while your father in the same situation would clean his wand and buy you an ice cream?"

"Yes, I remember."

"If you had stopped balancing, Draco, you would be sitting in the Slytherin Common Room now, with your fellow Death Eaters to be. You wouldn't sit in the dark, all alone, and fight yourself."

He chuckled softly, a sudden sound that made Draco turn to him with a look of confusion on his face.

"You would care about all those wrinkles in your robes, or about the straightness of your back," Harry chuckled again. "And you certainly wouldn't allow a mere Gryffindor to comfort you."

For a long time, Draco looked at him, his face unreadable, and Harry wondered if this had been enough, if he had given Draco the answers he had needed.

Then, that frown between his friend's eyebrows cleared, his shoulders sank down in tired relaxation, and Harry knew that he had been right to come here tonight, that he hadn't risked their friendship but rather had made it stronger, and he smiled, relieved and glad at what he had been able to do.

And Draco smiled, too.

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She apparated back to the edge of Hogwarts' wards, and the sudden darkness and quiet was a shock to her overexcited mind.

She knew that she would have to return to Severus' rooms soon, that most of the Order members would still be awake and waiting for her in Headquarters, but she needed a few moments, if only to detach herself from her Death Eater personality.

And to reflect on what she had accomplished tonight.

Voldemort had retired to a private apartment soon after her presentation of the prophecy, his eyes greedy and his body language more snakelike than she had seen it in a few months.

She had returned with Lucius to the ballroom, feeling the eyes of the Inner Circle on her, and had proceeded to feed him every little detail of his son's brilliant achievement.

Lucius had been so proud that he hadn't even thought about taking her somewhere private, a fact for which she was immensely grateful.

Once the Inner Circle members had trickled back into the main room, the festivities had dimmed and become even shriller at the same time. Most of the Inner Circle refused to mingle with the less important or powerful wizards; instead, they huddled together in groups, anti-listening charms springing up across the room.

Hermione didn't have to read their lips to know what they were discussing, and she didn't have to read their minds to know that every single one of them hoped to present a solution to the problem in a few hours time, the solution to the problem Voldemort had presented them with.

How to get Harry Potter out in the open at an ancient night, despite his knowledge of the prophecy. Despite his knowledge of his own weakness.

But she alone had a solution that would work. And she intended to keep it back as long as possible, to let the tension built slowly until her idea brought the relief Voldemort must be itching for right now.

The thought had made her smile as she continued to praise Draco in minute details.

An echo of that smile played around her lips now, as she walked slowly towards the lake, the invisibility cloak hiding her body and dress from view.

_It is done_, She thought, wonder filling her as she remembered how long she had waited for this night, how much had happened since she had first thought of this mad, this desperate plan, how much she and the world around her had changed.

One thing she had learned over the past year, perhaps the most important thing she had ever learned, was that she needed her friends. She couldn't have done without them, without Draco and Harry. And Severus, the glorious gift that fate had handed her as compensation for her suffering.

But although she knew this well enough, for one moment she felt pride well up in her, pride that she had come so far, that she had achieved so much despite all those difficulties.

_It is done,_ She thought again. _The first step to the end of all this. _

Then, her smile vanished, to make way for darker thoughts.

The Dark Lord had been delighted with her idea, delighted enough to once more praise her openly in front of the Inner Circle. When he had shown himself to the Outer Circle, later that night, he had presented her to them as his 'secret weapon', and she had seen the powerful men around her seethe with jealousy.

Even Lucius' happiness about his son's honour had been replaced by anger.

She was well aware that with tonight, her power among the Death Eaters had reached a peak. She stood high enough among them now to let Voldemort accept her plan, high enough to even command most of them.

But from the top of a mountain, there was only one way to go.

Down.

And while she was sure that Voldemort would accept her plan in the long run – she felt it in her bones – she also knew that he couldn't let her tower above his men for much longer.

Unease, envy and wrath were breeding among them. Rumours had been flying wild after his exuberant praise.

Someone would make her trip, or set her up, or perhaps someone would find the courage to point out to their Lord how much damage she could do to their cause.

Perhaps Voldemort would realize it himself, eventually.

And then she would fall.

Fast, and hard, and irrevocably.

The only question was whether she would shatter on the ground, or drown in the water, or manage to rescue herself one last time.

She sighed, and her eyes rested on the lake that shimmered like silver under the full moon.

Whatever would happen to her, the plan was worth it. She would give her own life, and more, to finally end this war. It was worth it.

But in her mind she saw Harry's face, and Draco's, and Severus' eyes, dark with doubt and desperate love, and something in her chest grew cold.

Then, she shook her head decisively and turned away from the dark lake, towards the castle.

Whatever would happen, it was worth it. She would do what had to be done.

And in the end, they would thank her for it.

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A/N: Thank you all for your support and patience. I will update both story and livejournal as soon as I find the time!


	60. Tigress, Tigress, Burning Bright

**A/N:** Right, people! Many of you asked for this chapter, many demanded it, and I had a hell lot of fun writing it. Don't be mistaken – this is as Mary Sueish as this fic will get, and it's pure enjoyment before the story will turn darker again (That's _my_ cool heroine kicking ass, na na nana na!)

0o0

** Tigress, Tigress, Burning Bright**

"Our plan has been presented to Voldemort, and he didn't seem averse to it," Dumbledore announced the next morning when the usual group of Inner and Outer Circle members had gathered in the Order gym for another harrowing session of training.

Harry's and Draco's eyes flickered towards Hermione, who was sitting in the strategy section of the room, deeply engrossed in a book. As if to counteract the last night, her attire and behaviour practically screamed professionalism today. She had twisted her long hair into a tight knot, and the dark brown trousers and blouse only stressed the lack of any make-up or jewellery. And the lack of a smile.

She looked tired, and perhaps her paleness could be blamed on the long night she had had, but the way she concentrated on her book and her book alone, although Harry knew her well enough by now to be sure that she was aware of every change in her surroundings, could only be attributed to nervousness.

Or perhaps she simply didn't want to talk about last night.

Harry sent her a smile, knowing she would notice it immediately, and saw Draco at his side offer a greeting, too. Draco's masks were firmly back in place today, and although he probably expected an attack from every side, he held himself as straight and controlled as always.

"This means two things for us," Dumbledore continued, trading a short look with Severus. "First, that no Order member may visit Tintagel or the area close to it from now on, no matter what the reason. Second, that we will have to intensify our training. We _must_ be ready on Halloween. Everything depends on it."

Harry could hear a frustrated sound rising from his classmates that were scattered around the room, and he could have sworn that several of the older Order members had joined in. He shared a short, amused smile with Draco, although he himself wasn't too fond of spending even more time running, ducking and rolling away from simulated threats.

Despite whatever he had thought as a younger boy, duelling wasn't fun at all. It was nothing but hard, bone-aching work, and even with the safety spells installed everywhere in the room, it was quite dangerous.

Not to mention that they were all studying for their NEWTs like mad. Exams were scheduled in two weeks' time, and he had no idea how he was to combine that work load with a training that would become even more intensive.

He sighed. It was no use to grumble and moan, he had too much to learn to waste time like that. And as he walked over to the duelling platform, something told him that he would yet be grateful for every single bit of knowledge he assembled now, while he still could.

Despite Draco's forebodings, the training went well. There were a few strange looks sent towards him by the Weasleys, and Ron was eyeing him with open distrust, but the other Order members treated him as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened.

Which meant friendly smiles in the case of Remus and McGonagall, rough commands from Moody and precise, arrogant comments from Severus whenever they lost their focus for even a heartbeat.

Harry would have never admitted it, but during these training sessions he came as close to hating Severus as it was in him these days.

It was not that he was taunting or ridiculing them like he had done in Potions, or that he was less than patient (anyone actually managing to teach Ron Occlumency had to be as patient as a rock).

It was just that he saw _everything_. Every wand movement less than perfectly executed, every weakness in shields or defence, and every unbalance in stance.

He didn't appear to watch at all, concentrating more on the discussion between Dumbledore and Hermione, but the moment Harry, Ron or anybody else made a mistake, just the tiniest little error, he would be standing there, firing a harmless hex at their weak spot to show them the danger, demanding a repetition of the spell gone wrong or correcting whatever came to mind.

Once, he had appeared besides Harry and had given him a shove, or rather a tiny little push, and Harry, caught off balance by his last move, had stumbled to the ground like a chair with three legs, immediately blushing to his hair roots.

He hadn't even seen Severus coming. Or heard him.

And the really irritating thing about him was that this man who demanded perfection from them, this man that urged them to train endlessly, the same moves again and again, never good enough, that this man would never show a shred of his own duelling skills.

Remus and Moody would pair off to duel now and then, or give them a presentation of new spells or moves, and Tonks, Shacklebolt, Flitwick or McGonagall, far advanced in their duelling skills to what Harry, Ron or even Draco could ever hope to accomplish would meet them in competition on the duelling platform.

But not Severus. All he would do was sneak up on them, fire off a spell and tell them smugly what they had done wrong.

The only other person with such a strict non-dueling policy was Hermione, who couldn't be persuaded to duel any of them, although the twins, Harry and Draco had requested it more than once.

But at least she didn't comment what they did up on the platform. She would just stick to the strategy table and appear to ignore the training around her, although Harry could sometimes feel her eyes on him and would look up to be met with a small frown or an even smaller, satisfied smile.

Completely unlike Severus, who made his appraisal of their skills obvious to everybody in the room.

While Remus directed them through their usual warm-up routine, Harry's eyes wandered from student to member, from friend to friend.

Draco's face was still like a mask, but a muscle in his jaw, twitching periodically, told Harry exactly how his friend felt. Ron's face, on the other hand, was an open book as his gaze flickered from Draco to Hermione, to Harry and back.

Harry could see worry in his eyes, a longing to connect with them again, but the feelings were tainted with revulsion and anger, and Harry knew that, as far as Ron had come these last weeks, he still had a long way to go.

Ginny, Neville and Luna, outsiders to the group and the tense atmosphere between them, traded questioning looks with each other. It was clear that they wanted to know what was going on, but Neville wasn't up to confronting them, Luna probably blamed some invisible creature, and Ginny had – surprisingly enough to Harry – restrained that temper of hers over the last weeks, probably because she had realized that whatever was going on in the Inner Circle simply was too big for her.

Here they were, his 'Ministry Crew' with the addition of his former worst enemy, and what a far cry from the DA this was.

Harry grunted as he stretched downward to touch his toes, then straightened relieved when Remus told them to pair off and start training shield charms. Sending Ron an excusing glance, he walked towards Draco, not sure whether the Slytherin was up today to the usual distrusting glares he received from the others.

They had barely began when Severus was by their side, shaking his head in annoyance and telling Draco sharply to 'adjust his stand'. Harry could see that Draco's heart wasn't in it, not surprisingly. He doubted that his friend had gotten much sleep last night.

But despite the unusual circumstances, Severus didn't seem inclined to go easy today. Quite the opposite, since he seemed to criticize, correct and belittle them more even than on his tense days.

After twenty minutes of being constantly interrupted, even Harry felt near the boiling point, too angry even to wonder why Severus was tormenting them on this of all days.

Five minutes later, when ordered to perform the same charm for the third time, Draco snapped.

"I've had it, Severus," He hissed, his face pale with anger. "Why don't you show us what you are able to do instead of just criticizing our every move?"

Draco closed his mouth with a shocked snap when the words were barely through, and his eyes showed nothing but shock that he had let his temper run away with him like that.

Severus just lifted an eyebrow, obviously willing to let it go, and began to turn away in silence, but neither of them had counted on the Weasley twins.

"Too true, my fair-haired friend," One of them shouted from where the two were duelling Shacklebolt and Tonks. "Too true!"

"We have also," The other one started.

"…been wondering…"

"…why our esteemed Spymaster…"

"seems above training himself."

Harry took a breath and waited for the explosion to come. Severus didn't like being questioned, especially not where his abilities were concerned. Harry looked around and found that most of the room's attention was levelled on them.

_Just great_, He thought. _On the one day that Draco doesn't need extra-attention_.

But instead of a sharp, caustic answer, the Spymaster just quirked a lip in amusement and leaned back against the duelling platform.

"Why," He answered softly, his silky voice vibrating in the room. "That might just be because of the level of your training, Messieurs Weasley."

"Oh, sure," One of the twins – Harry was pretty sure that it was Fred, who seemed to do sarcasm just a hint more convincing than his brother – said. "Considering that there must be half of the best living duellers assembled in this room."

"Right, Severus," Tonks now, taking the twins' side probably out of pure curiosity. "I'm sure Remus would just love to duel you."

Remus, straightening slightly, seemed more than willing, but there was a nervousness in his face that Harry couldn't quite place.

"Sure," He agreed. "But I'm afraid that it wouldn't be very interesting, neither for you nor for Severus."

"Oho," The other twin whistled, probably sensing an embarrassing story about Severus. "And why would that be?"

Severus' smile just widened, until it exposed his canines and looked downright threatening. Remus just grimaced.

"Severus is a master in the art of martial duels," He admitted. "And while I'm certainly up for the magical part, the other…elements would make it too unequal a pair."

"Martial duel?" Harry asked, interested despite his intentions. "What's that?"

"A very old form of duelling," Moody answered, his rough voice filled with a strange sort of caution. "There are only few who practice it today."

"Why?" Ron asked, obviously deciding that asking Moody was much safer than questioning Severus.

Moody shrugged. "Lack of skills and dedication to the art. Martial duels are more like a dance than a normal duel. They combine physical and magical elements and need mastery of both aspects. Also it's too dangerous for many. Coward, all of them."

Harry's eyes darted towards Severus, who looked as if he enjoyed himself enormously. As close lipped and stern their Spymaster normally was, he certainly had a taste for the …more dramatic entrances, and he didn't seem to mind the attention one bit.

"Pity," He drawled. "It seems that I will have to remain a passive bystander after all."

"I certainly _could_ try to…" Remus offered, a mixture of longing and worry in his face.

If anything, Severus' amusement seemed to deepen.

"Come now, Remus," He said, smirking evilly. "You know perfectly well that you aren't a challenge for me."

"Unfortunately," Remus grinned, accepting the rebuff easily. "He's right about that. I have studied it a bit, but more on the theoretical side. Severus is a master. It would be boring for him and a disgrace for the dance."

"But I want to see it done," Harry insisted, his curiosity awakened. A combination of the physical and the magical? Was this something like the duel between Dumbeldore and Voldemort, back in fifth year, when Dumbledore had animated the statues of the fountain?

If it was, he just _had_ to see it.

"Is there no one you would duel with? Mad-Eye?"

Moody shook his head and lifted his wooden leg a few inches from the floor, "Not fast enough for it," He grunted. "But I wasn't good at it even before I lost my leg. Not as good as Severus, anyway.

"I'm afraid there really is no one," Severus drawled, shaking his head mournfully. There was a pause, and suddenly Harry _knew_ that Severus had planned this all out, that they had just sprang a trap he had laid them. "Unless, of course, Hermione would lower herself to accept my humble challenge for the sake of knowledge?"

Harry's fascination increased another degree as he turned his head towards the strategy section, where Hermione looked up from her book in irritation.

Was that what it was all about? Another phase in the 'stop questioning Hermione'-campaign? But if Severus had staged this to force Hermione in the open, that meant that she _really_ had to be good, or the effect would have been wasted.

Now Harry was determined to see a martial duel performed in this room.

Suddenly feeling all eyes on her, Hermione shut her book with an audible thud and rose, frowning.

"I don't think that would be a wise idea, Severus," She declined.

"Hermione?" Fred called, his tone of voice implying that clearly Severus had to be joking. "She was never any good at duelling. Not even in the fifth great when we founded the DA."

"You should have learned by now never to underestimate her," Severus warned, an amused glint in his eyes.

"What is the matter, _Miss Granger_," He then asked, turning back to her, "Are you afraid?"

Harry smiled at this reminder of Draco's and his duel in their second year, and his smile widened when he saw a glimmer awaken in Hermione's eyes, a sure sign that the challenge was realized and accepted

"You wish," She echoed Harry's past answer and Harry felt Draco besides him relax.

"Surely you aren't serious, are you, Severus?" McGonagall asked, more than a bit of worry in her voice. "You are not trying to tell us that Miss Granger is trained in martial duels?"

"Am I not always serious, Minerva?" He drawled back, now looking positively fiendish. Harry could see Neville at the other end of the room shudder in sudden fear, despite the fact that Severus had shown nothing but civility towards his former student. It seemed that instincts were stronger than the past months' reality.

"I have to see that," Remus suddenly said, "If you really can, Hermione, I'd be delighted to watch. It's been years since I had the pleasure to witness a true duel!"

She still hadn't moved, looking from one to the other, taking in McGonagalls concern, the twins' and Remus' excitement. Then she looked up to Severus, who had climbed the duelling platform and extended a hand towards her.

"Come on, Hermione," He nearly whispered, "Don't hide."

Finally, she shrugged and nodded acceptingly. "But only once," she warned, "and if any of you laugh, I'll box your ears."

"We'll do our best," They promised, but from their faces it was clear that they didn't expect much.

"Very well," She finally agreed and nodded her acceptance.

But to the group's surprise, she made no move to climb the platform, just as Severus walked away from it with quick steps. Both retired to a corner of the room and discarded their outer robes.

"You can't wear everything at a real duel," Remus explained at a half whisper, "The clothes should be tight fitting. The usual duel robes are out of the question. And from what I know about Severus' duelling style, it is always a wise thing to wear something fireproof around him."

"Fireproof?" Harry asked, not really believing his ears, and heard Neville and Ginny echo his question.

But instead of an answer, Remus just sent them a wide, excited grin. "You'll see," Was all he said as an answer.

After a short moment, Hermione returned to the group gathered around the duelling platform. She had transfigured her school shirt and blouse into a tight fitting top made of brown cotton and trousers that snug tightly around her hips, then widened to give her full range of movement. Her long hair was braided and fixed around her head like a golden crown.

Harry could see surprise on the twins' faces as they took in Hermione's surprisingly muscled figure, but their surprise widened into outright shock when Severus joined them, wearing a similar outfit in black.

_I never thought there were any muscles below those robes_, Harry mused_, I always thought Severus was fat…_

Both Hermione and Severus, took out their wands and offered them to Remus, who bowed solemnly and carefully secured them in his pocket.

_How will they duel without any wands?_

Then, Severus raised one hand.

"Accio duel wands," He said, and it took only a second until a small, black box appeared and flew directly into his hand.

He opened it, offering it to Hermione with another slight bow.

Harry gasped as he saw what the box contained - instead of the usual, wooden wands, two knives were resting on black velvet. As Hermione chose one of them, he saw that they were made of a combination of wood and several metals, the handle a dark, polished brown and the silver of the blade glittering softly in the golden sunlight.

Grasping the handle expertly as if this was nothing more than a normal wand, Hermione stepped aside to let Severus take his knife. To Harry, the weapons looked awfully sharp and dangerous, and suddenly he wasn't so sure anymore if he wanted to see this done.

"Why do you use knives instead of your wands?" He inquired weakly.

"These are wand-knives, Harry," Remus told him, raising his voice so that all the Hogwarts students gathered around could understand him. "The wooden core contains a magical element, and the blade is of the finest silver. This makes it possible to combine magical and physical fight into one weapon, as it was tradition in the duels of old."

"But isn't this terribly dangerous?" Ron asked, shooting a worried glance to Hermione, who had climbed the platform, the wand-knife resting in her right hand.

"That's what a duel is about, Weasley," Severus answered. There was a dark, gleaming light in his eyes as he followed Hermione up the platform. "Where is the fun if no risks are involved?"

Harry saw that Professor McGonagall had edged closer to Remus, her eyes and face clearly betraying her concern.

"Do you really think this is a wise idea, Remus?" She asked nervously. "People have been killed during these duels, and though I know that Miss Granger trained with Severus, I'm not sure if she's ready for this!"

"She looks confident enough," Remus shrugged, pointing towards Hermione on the platform. "In fact, she appears to enjoy this tremendously."

Following the direction of Remus' hand, Harry realized that Hermione did in fact look excited and rather like she used to do before a favourite lesson. There was a glint in her eyes he had seldom seen, and her whole being seemed fixed on Severus, daring him to begin.

Remus raised his hands, and silence fell on the murmuring inhabitants of the duelling room.

"Then let it begin," He announced. "The duel will end when…"

"When one opponent is disarmed or wounded too severely to continue," Severus interrupted smoothly, and Remus' eyes widened for a second. Harry felt his heart beat faster inside his chest. Normally, duels ended when the first blood was drawn or one of the fighters was incapable of continuing. This would go much further, and he was quite sure he didn't like the idea of Hermione being "too wounded" to continue.

"The original martial duels ended only with the death of one of the fighters," Remus whispered in Harry's ear, and this explanation did nothing at all to relieve him.

But it seemed as if Hermione and Severus were completely oblivious to the reactions of their colleagues and peers.

Wand hands raised behind their heads like the arm of an archer, they started to circle one another. The air crackled with concentration and magical energy. There was a grace in their step, a fluent elegance with which they moved, that reminded Harry of animals of prey.

Suddenly, Hermione attacked: "Sectumsempra," she cried, whipping her wand forward in a movement too quick to be followed by their eyes. But before the spell had even left her knife, Severus' defences were up, and he had already uttered another spell. Curse on block, block on hex followed so swiftly that they felt dazed. Flashes of light, strange creatures and dark clouds of magic appeared and vanished too fast to be made out. Harry didn't even know half of the spells, and he could do nothing but stare open mouthed at his friend and his Spymaster.

This wasn't fighting, this was art!

Finally, Severus blocked yet another spell that had taken the form of huge tentacles, trying to suffocate him, and lowered his wand again, Hermione following his example. Harry raised his hands to applaud, feeling absolutely mesmerized, but a hand on his shoulder stopped him.

"Don't," Remus whispered, "They haven't even started yet."

"What?" Harry gasped. This had been the most amazing piece of duelling he'd ever seen, apart perhaps from Dumbledore's fight with Voldemort in the ministry of magic.

A look around him showed students, teachers and Order members as fascinated as he himself was. The expression on Ron's face was even more stupid than his had been, and Neville looked like he would faint any minute.

"Warmed up then, Hermione," Severus asked teasingly, a preying smile now open in his face, "Shall we start?"

"If you're ready," Hermione replied, her voice as taunting as his, smiling with pleasure.

They had forgotten their audience now, and as they started to circle again, something changed in the atmosphere of the room. The floor seemed to vibrate in the rhythm of their steps, the air humming with power.

Suddenly, Severus raised his wandless arm into the air, and when he brought it down again, fire was blazing in the palm of his hand, forming a deadly ball of flames that he threw at Hermione.

Harry cried out in shock. He had never seen something like that done before and the raw power frightened him. He was not the only one to scream with surprise, but their words died in their throats as Hermione didn't even try to dodge the fire. She didn't block it either. She simply raised a hand against the flames, and the fire vanished into her palm.

"Oh, please," She grinned. "Can't you do any better?"

Then, she attacked.

With one lightning fast leap, she had bridged the distance between them and slammed a high kick towards his face, using her speed to pirouette once around herself, and shot a ball of blue fire towards him.

But Severus reacted even faster. Gripping her foot, he turned it deftly to the left side, causing Hermione to lose her balance for a heartbeat while his own body twisted away from the red flash of magic and his knife-wand slashed at her side.

Instead of resisting his touch, Hermione followed the twist of her leg and leaned into it, until she rolled away and was on her feet again in an instant, bringing her knife down hard where his chest had been only moments before.

But Severus was standing again, too, sending a lightning bolt of red magic towards her that she dodged easily.

"You have been training," He accused her, the battle fever burning like dark flames in his eyes.

"No! It's just you getting old!" She teased him, and the wild joy on her face turned her into a beauty, before she once more launched herself at him.

They didn't bother with spells any more, there hands forming lightning out of air and their wand-knives blocking hexes as if they were swords or fists aimed at them. Physical and magical fight blended into each other until it wasn't clear any longer what they were doing, whether it was a kick or spell that made Hermione jump sharply to the right, whether it was Hermione's knife or hex that threw Severus to the floor.

It was the fiercest fight Harry had ever seen, more lethal and beautiful than he could ever have imagined. The movements of the two opponents were seductive and deadly at the same time, a dance of knives and magic accentuated by the melody of their laughter, for both were laughing openly by now, encouraging each other and urging the other to try even more dangerous attacks and counter attacks.

It seemed to Harry as if he had never seen Hermione more alive before, more herself than in this breathtaking, unearthly dance with her Spymaster. Awe was filling the faces around him, wonder at the beauty that lay in those graceful, deadly steps, and fear of this display of power they were witnessing.

Five minutes into it, both were panting and sweating profusely.

"I'll get you this time," Severus promised her, using the distance between them to hastily wipe his forehead free of sweat.

But he had underestimated how fast she was, and the moment of inattention was enough for her to sent a ripple of air towards him. Where it touched the duelling stage, the blue cloth turned black from the heat, but Hermione didn't seem to notice the ground under her feet as she sped towards him.

"You said that last time, too," She laughed as her wand-knife arched towards him in a graceful bow of fire and ice, directly pointed at his heart.

"And I meant it, you Gryffindor! You're still not fast enough," In the blink of an eye, before Harry had even realized he had moved, Severus stood behind her, his wand-knife resting at her throat.

"You may have fooled me with that one the last time," He teased her, smiling openly. "But I am not known to be fooled twice."

"I'll have to think of something new, then," Hermione panted, but her grin was brilliant as Severus released her and both bowed towards each other again.

The duel had ended.

Now that she finally stood still, Harry noticed that Hermione sported more than one wound. There was a bloody gash in her thigh, and another one across her right arm, where the hem of her top had been ripped away by Severus' knife. But Severus, Harry saw with something like pride, didn't look much better.

Silently, their heavy breathing the only sound in the room, they climbed from the platform, carefully deposited the wand-knives in their velvet lined box and received their real wands from Remus. They didn't seem to notice the awed faces that surrounded them as Severus quickly healed Hermione's wounds and then his own.

"Eight minutes," Severus announced then after a glance towards the huge clock above the door. "_You_ needed seventeen when you defeated me last time."

"I am a cat, Severus," Hermione purred in answer. "I like to play with my victims before I eat them."

But it seemed that the presence of her peers and teachers had finally caught up with her, for she suddenly ducked her head and blushed violently.

It was such an un-Hermione expression that it pierced through Harry's astonishment and reminded him that, yes, of course, the duel had been brilliant, but why the hell was he so surprised? He had seen Hermione achieve seemingly incredible things before, after all, and if she had spent the last year training with Severus it wasn't exactly amazing that they had gotten so good.

"Nice duel," He drawled in his best Draco tone.

"Hey, that's my line," Draco complained from somewhere at his right, in exactly the same tone. "Just because you have that scar doesn't mean you can steal other people's witty comebacks!"

"And just because you're Slytherin doesn't mean you have a birthright to wittiness. Get over it, ferret," Harry tossed back, realizing what Draco was trying to do and happily playing along.

All this attention was making Hermione nervous, and if they could misdirect some of it the better.

"Oh, I'm wounded, really I am," Draco answered. "The injustice of it! Especially considering that a Slytherin just beat a Gryffindor!"

"Barely," Severus threw in, his eyes resting on Hermione's still red face with a delighted expression. Their eyes met, and from the deepening blush Harry assumed that Severus had told her something not suitable at all for their ears.

"If only I had known about this before!" Professor McGonagall suddenly announced, her face twisted into a grimace of mock-regret. "It would have been perfect! Just imagine we had told the students that both the Head Girl and the Potions Master were capable of something like that! Nobody would have broken curfew ever again!"

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**A/N: **The Title of this Chapter refers to William Blake's poem „The Tiger," of which „Tyger, Tyger, burning bright" is the first line.

I hope you don't hate it. It has been written for a long time, and I seriously considered deleting it again, but then I decided that we were all entitled to a bit of fun.

Review!


	61. Gather Ye Rosebuds

A/N: Finally! (bad author, bad author!) Please do check my lifejournal for news about updating, then there's no reason to worry!

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**Gather Ye Rosebuds While Ye May**

The final exams approached and with them Hermione's exam personality, that frenzied, bushy haired, always panicky little person that insisted to study for hours and colour coded all their notes, whether they wanted it or not.

At least in public. Whenever they left the eyes of their fellow students, however, Harry was surprised at how little Hermione seemed to care about the tests that would crown their school work.

While he and Draco _knew_ that there were more important things than the NEWTs in this world, and Ron cared little about his grades, all three of them studied whenever a free moment presented itself, going so far as meeting in the gym _before_ the appointed times to work on their practical Charms or Transfiguration abilities.

When Harry had approached Severus with a question about the properties of Goldenrain, probably the first voluntary question about potions he had ever asked, Severus had grinned broadly and – Harry couldn't help thinking – triumphantly, and walked away without a word.

But when Harry had settled down at his usual place during Order meetings that evening, he had found a heap of old, battered books lying on the table before him, which turned out to be the Potions textbooks from fourth year onwards.

Harry had opened the one at the top and found a myriad of comments scribbled on the margins, between the lines and wherever there was space for them, all of them in the long drawn, sharp handwriting he had come to know as their Spymaster's.

He found the question to his answer on page three, along with instructions that made Harry understand things he had studied in vain for hours before.

Realizing that these had to be Severus' old school books, he looked up to the other man with astonished, thankful eyes. Severus had just inclined his head in a gesture of respect and turned the other way.

Yes, Harry was studying for his NEWTs, was for the first time really understanding that knowledge was more than something used to torture him with, and he embraced these last weeks of school in the fervent hope of gaining as much of it as possible.

But Hermione, who had come to embody for Harry all the zeal and ambition a student could have, didn't seem to care that exams were approaching, and fast. All her attention was concentrated on the strategy meetings, their training and, strangely enough, the few free hours she managed to share with Harry and Draco.

Harry had never thought that a time would come when Hermione would prefer a long stroll around the lake to studying, but when he had asked her, one day, she had just shrugged.

"I will pass anyway," She told him with a voice that seemed bored and strangely intense at the same time. "And I received more than one offer of apprenticeship already. So I see no reason to fret over exams."

She took a deep breath, exhaled, and let her eyes wander over the lake, the castle and the softly rolling hills that met the mountains somewhere in the distance.

"This, however," She whispered. "Is just a fleeting moment, and we don't know what time will bring. Our time at Hogwarts could be over all too soon, and I want to enjoy it while I can."

She grinned, suddenly. "Carpe diem," She told Harry gravely. "Gather ye rosebuds while ye may/ Old Time is still a-flying/ And this same flower that smiles to-day/ To- morrow will be dying."

Harry frowned, still trying to understand the strange tone of her voice.

"I don't think I like that motto," He told her, watching her face carefully.

She shrugged. "But it's so true," She answered lightly, and, turning towards the lake again, let him wonder and worry on his own.

When he turned to Draco with his observations, he found out that he hadn't been the only one to notice her behaviour, but Draco's explanation did little to lighten his worries.

"Dangerous times are ahead, Harry," Draco told him calmly. "We are approaching the main battle, _the_ confrontation with Voldemort. Who knows how many of us will survive that day? And you, Weasley and Hermione will be standing in the front line, fighting Voldemort himself. No wonder she isn't that sure about her future."

"But that's not Hermione's style of thinking," Harry protested, frustrated that his friend wouldn't see the flaw in his reasoning. "Normally she plans, and frets, and spends more time with preparations than is good for her. But she never concentrates on spending time with her friends – it's like she was saying goodbye or something."

"I think she's saying goodbye to more than just us," Draco disagreed. "The moment she graduates, she will become the Master Spy full time. Once all this will hopefully be over, she will emerge as Severus' companion and an apprentice with a bright future, but the Hermione she was as a child will be gone irrevocably. She's saying goodbye to a whole way of life, don't you see?"

But try as he might, Harry couldn't see it, at least not completely. The situation reminded him terribly of the year before, when something about Hermione had itched and worried him. But he hadn't been able to see below her surface to her dark secrets, then, and it didn't seem that he could understand her true motives, now.

But there were also good things about the period madly optimistic people had called 'exams preparation'. With the knowledge of certain doom ahead, the seventh years of Gryffindor house once more united to their former closeness, spending hours and hours in the library, the Common Room, or nervously huddled together over their house table in the Great Hall.

With more than a bit of amusement, Harry noticed that the other years kept a careful distance from them and the fifth year OWL-victims. He also noticed the frightened and at the same time longing glances the sixth years sent at their group, and tried to remember how he had felt in his former grades.

Had he been looking forward to finishing school? Had he been anxiously awaiting the summer holidays?

No, he decided with a chuckle. At this time of year, he had usually been quite busy surviving whatever scheme Voldemort had sprang at him, and he certainly hadn't longed for his time with the Dursleys.

Not to mention that, thanks to Hermione, the knowledge of their NEWTs exams had been a constant presence in his mind from first year onward.

Quite funny that she was now the only one who kept her head.

From his place before the Common Room fireplace, Harry watched her calmly explain some Potions procedure to Neville, who had – in the face of an even greater horror named exams – finally overcome his awe and fear of the Master Spy, and had approached her with a timid question.

Hermione's friendliness and openness seemed to have surprised him a great deal, but if his reaction had hurt her, she didn't let it show.

Instead, she had plunged into an impromptu lecture about the finer points of sleeping potions, and soon her audience consisted not only of Neville, but of Seamus, Lavender, Ron and Harry as well.

Ginny had chosen to join them, too, arguing that repetitions in Potions could never come too early, but Harry suspected that she was simply enjoying the old group's reunification.

When their questions moved on to shield charms, Seamus and Lavender lost interest and Hermione gestured towards Harry, telling the others that he was the best in DADA, after all.

"And perhaps we should go somewhere…more private," She added with a significant look at the clock. "After all, we don't want to destroy the Common room two nights before our exams."

Harry followed her eyes and saw that only half an hour was left until their evening training would begin. He nodded.

"Good idea," He agreed, then lowered his voice to an exaggerated whisper. "Let's head _You-know-where_," He announced ominously, earning grins and laughter not only from the Order members, but also from the other Gryffindors who probably believed they were talking about the Room of Requirement in which their oh-so-forbidden Defence Association had been held during fifth year.

Harry still was amazed how easily secrets kept themselves if one employed the necessary subtlety.

"So Neville," He said lightly as they left the Common Room and made their way towards the library before turning sharply left and entering an unused classroom where Severus had deposited yet another one of his magical tapestries (Harry would really have to ask him where he got them from). "With school nearly over, do you have an idea what you want to do when you're finished?"

Neville, not surprisingly, went beetle-red.

It was a source of constant amazement to Harry. Despite his nervous, stuttering habits, Neville was one of the most courageous persons he had ever met, rising to every occasion and taking even shocks like Hermione's double identity in stride. But ask him about himself and he would be completely overwhelmed, as if he wasn't worth the attention.

"I bet you'll apprentice in Herbology," Hermione said in an obvious effort to relieve their friend. "You're better with plants than anyone I know. Even Madame Sprout says you're one of the best pupils she ever had."

She stepped through the magic tapestry before Neville was forced to answer, and thus missed his near-faint reaction to praise from Hermione Granger.

As it was usually the case, the sight of the Headquarter's gym made Harry tense up and relax at the same time. Tense, because this was the room where all his abilities were needed as Moody, Remus and Severus brought him to his limits and beyond time and again.

He couldn't count how many embarrassing situations he had blundered into in this room, how many times he had thought himself stupid beyond belief or had been humbled by the magical strength and agility of others.

Relax because despite all this he was safe here, in the presence of friends who shared his knowledge and beliefs, and because he could treat people like Hermione and Draco the way they deserved.

As second nature as it had become to him, dropping the act always was a relief, and he greeted Draco, who was seated at the strategy table with a book in hand, with a broad smile.

"Don't you have a home, Malfoy", Ron asked, and, as it was usual these days, his tone didn't quite tell whether his words were meant as a good-natured taunt or an insult. "Shouldn't you be conspiring with your fellow snakes, planning how to cheat your way through the exams?"

_So it's an insult day_, Harry thought, his heart sinking. This was the one thing that managed to darken the friendly working atmosphere in this room – the continuing enmity between Draco and Ron.

"Oh, we planned that months ago," Draco answered, his smile not even pretending to reach his eyes. "And since we possess brilliancy, influence and _wealth_," He paused a moment, letting the long used insult sink in. "We won't have to cheat at all. I, personally, am convinced that the examiners will be too awed by my personality not to hand out the 'Outstandings' by the dozens."

To Harry's surprise and Ron's dismay, it was Ginny who chuckled appreciatively and waved Draco over to join them.

"I think they'd rather be blinded by your ego," She disagreed in a friendly tone. "Though I must admit that your hair style _can_ be overwhelming."

Draco sniffed as if he didn't deem such impertinence worthy of comment, then greeted Hermione with the customary kiss on her forehead, a gesture that drew a gurgling sound from Ron as it always did.

"Prat," She greeted him amiably, and Draco sniffed again, leaning against the duelling platform as if the whole room belonged to him and watching them transfigure their school robes to something more suitable for duelling work.

Harry reluctantly began his stretching exercises, knowing that he would regret it if he went slack on them and Moody forced him through a round of blood-and-sweat exercises tonight.

Standing on one foot, his knee drawn up to his chest, he absently murmured ingredients to the sleeping potions they had revised during the last session, which caused Hermione, who was sitting cross legged on the duelling platform, to critically comment on people who were thinking about nothing but exams all day.

He broke into a grin, waited for Draco's inevitable comment, then started to stretch his legs and tried to remember the healing properties of semi-precious stones.

"You three are really weird together," Ginny commented suddenly, and Harry, still standing on one leg, nearly lost his balance.

Used as he was to the endless well of insensitive Weasley comments, they still managed to surprise him time and again.

"Weird good or weird bad?" He asked carefully, and felt the room go silent. He could well enough imagine Ron's expression of jealousy, and saw Neville's worried eyes from his left.

He was painfully aware that he had never really discussed the strange relationships between him, Hermione and the Slytherins with his Gryffindor friends.

"Weird good, definitely," Ginny answered immediately and he saw Draco to his right relax. "I mean, not to criticize you, Harry, but you are in an awful temper most of the time these days, at least in public, and Draco's arrogance is even worse. It's good to see that you're still normal people, even though it's only in this room. And I'm glad that Hermione isn't as obsessive with her studies as she pretends to be. She's driving half the Tower mad with her attitude."

"Seems to be my fate in life," Hermione remarked good-naturedly from her sitting place on the duelling platform. "And I could swear that I am responsible for most of the better planned learning efforts in our house."

'"Yes, but it's not you, is it?" Ginny said. "Your heart's not in it, just as Draco's isn't in torturing Gryffindors any more," Her eyes darted over to Ron, telling Harry loud and clear that she excluded Ron from this. "Only that one never notices that except here. It's creepy how well you all are acting."

"You should see Hermione when she's doing the stupid American," Draco threw in, confusing everyone in the room who hadn't been present at Aberforth Dumbledore's ball. "Now that's acting."

"Oh, don't flatter me, dear," Hermione cooed in her perfect Midwestern accent, her voice suddenly higher and more than a bit naïve, and Ginny giggled delightedly.

Harry wondered if she realized that this was more than just entertainment, more than Tonks' ability to produce noses on request, but then reminded himself that this was Ginny, who was generally considered to be the most intelligent Weasley for a reason.

"I wonder how people will react when you'll change suddenly, after Halloween," She then said, proving him right. "I mean, Draco hopefully won't have a reason to pretend anymore, then, and you can finally behave like a responsible adult, Harry, not like a sulking teenager."

"Oh, how I'll miss my tantrums," Harry said in a woebegone voice, but in his mind he had to agree. It would be strange to stop acting, at least to stop acting the way he did now. It would be even stranger to meet people like Severus or Moody in public and treat them with the easy respect of a colleague.

"So much will be different if we win this battle," He then said. "And I can't imagine in how many ways our world will change. Just think of it," He suddenly smiled. "No heavy auror surveillance at Diagon Alley anymore, no left-arm-controls in the Ministry. No Death Eaters."

"Sounds like paradise," Neville said quietly, and Harry remembered how much his life, too, had been shaped by Voldemort's reign.

"Oh, but I'm sure the wizarding world will invent some new terror before we can even get used to saying You-Know-Who's name," Darco threw in, but even in his face the thought of that future without the Dark Mark was leaving a trace of hope.

Harry heard Ron grumble something to himself, no doubt about the likelihood of Malfoy taking over as the next Dark Lord, but Ginny simply ignored him, her thoughtful eyes still trailing on Draco, Harry and Hermione.

"What are you going to do?" She asked. "You will be graduating in less than a month, and I bet no one has talked to you about it. But you will have to decide on a career once Halloween's over and done with."

"You may not have heard," Draco drawled. "But I was offered an apprenticeship by our dear Potions Mistress… did I mention that she asked me to call her Kathryn?"

Since Draco had done nothing over the last few weeks but publicly talk about his new position, as loudly and arrogantly as was humanly possible, Ginny just snorted.

"So that's more than just a façade?" She then asked, seeming to honestly care.

Draco shrugged. "I'm not sure," He admitted, surprisingly serious considering that he was in the midst of Gryffindors. "But I don't think I'll want to continue the Malfoy tradition of political meddling. Some real education, some _ability_ would be a good start."

"I'm still thinking about the auror training programme," Harry admitted after a minute of thoughtful silence. "I mean, once Voldemort is done with, many of the pureblood influences in the Ministry will be reduced, and I hope that they will finally kick Fudge out of office at the next election. What about you, Ron?"

He asked, hoping to include his former best mate in the atmosphere of relaxed intimacy.

Ron just shrugged. "Dunno," He answered. "Fred and George offered me a job with the Wizard Wheezes, and I thought I'd take that until I have decided…"

"What about you, Ginny," Hermione now asked. "A year isn't long, and then you'll have to decide, too."

Echoing Ron's shrug, Ginny added a grin to make the gesture seem friendlier. "No idea," She said lightly. "I can't even imagine going to school without all you people being here. You, Hermione?"

"Much will change," Hermione said, and for a moment Harry saw something dark flitter across her face, an expression he couldn't name. "Who knows where we will be, and what will have happened in half a year. The way I see it, there's no use in planning at the moment."

She stopped, brushed her hair back, and suddenly she was the relaxed, happy Hermione of the past weeks again. "But the shielding charms you promised, Harry," she continued in a teasing tone. "Might come to use in the direct future. Mind if we use the time before the others arrive?"

Only later, when training had started and Harry was panting his way across the room for the twentieth time did he realize that only Hermione had not answered Ginny's question, as if her future was something secret, something she didn't want to share.

Or as if she refused to think about her future at all.

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When Hermione returned from her written Arithmancy exam, Severus awaited her with a white lily in the left and a mug of hot apple juice in the right hand.

He smirked at her expression of total surprise, although he had expected it – he had, after all, never presented her with flowers before. But exams were exams, no matter what war they were planning right now, and exams asked for little presents.

"Your first test," He told her in answer to the way she eyed the flower. "I couldn't simply ignore it, could I?"

"Considering that I pretty much ignored exams over the last weeks, I didn't expect you to behave differently," She answered dryly, but he could see that his thoughtfulness pleased her.

Then, she took the flower with an expression of playful suffering and kissed him on the cheek. "At least it's not a red rose," She said, and he raised his now empty hand in protest.

"I would never stoop to such levels," He declared, knowing well enough how uncomfortable she felt in situations that could traditionally be labelled "romantic".

He was glad about it, since he had never shared the general need for sentimental nonsense, either, no matter what Minerva seemed to believe.

"Hot apple juice," Hermione now greeted the mug in his other hand, and the softening of her face told him that she remembered the day when he first had presented her with this beverage. "This changes everything! I might actually begin to think that the exams have a use, after all."

Severus couldn't help but disagree. "They are a nuisance," He said. "Watching hoards of sweating adolescents embarrass themselves in front of bored examiners. The only good thing about exams was the fact that I would never have to see the brats again in my life."

Hermione laughed. "Pity," She commented, taking the hot mug from him and resting her cheek against his chest. "Since that won't happen with this year's bunch of idiots, or at least not with a significant part."

He chuckled. "I don't mind certain significant parts staying close to me," He told her, then lowered his head to softly kiss her.

"I gather your exam was uneventful, then?"

She shrugged. "Rather anticlimactic," She answered. "It is unbelievable how difficult it is to be excited about exams when one performs at Voldemort's feet on a regular basis. The examiners are simply not that terrifying, nor are the consequences that interesting."

"You should tell him that," Severus answered. "Perhaps he would agree to host your DADA practicals."

A shadow darted across Hermione's face, so fast that he wasn't sure he had seen it, and she seemed to shrink in on herself for a moment, to lose all health and warm and pleasure, only to regain it in an instant.

He frowned. He had seen this behaviour often on her over the last weeks, a sudden darkness that would fill her up and choke her very being, a shadow that would vanish faster than a cloud crossing the sun. When asked, she would deny its existence decidedly, although Severus wasn't sure whether it was her truthfulness or her abilities as actress that made her so believable.

"Voldemort certainly is one of these people from work that I don't want to intrude on my free time," She now said, every trace of that strange shadow gone, and he chuckled again, deciding that she needed relaxation more than another fruitless discussion about the future.

"Only you could consider 'exams' free time, Hermione," He said, taking her hand and leading her over to their favourite sofa.

Suddenly, she embraced him, clung to him with all her strength, her head resting on his shoulder, her arms slung around him.

"I love you, Severus," She whispered. "You know that, don't you?"

"I love you too," He answered, his frown deepening, unseen by her. "Hermione, what…"

As abruptly as her fierce embrace had come, she was gone again, walking towards his desk with quick, self assured steps that showed nothing of the emotional whirlwind she seemed to be in.

"Nothing," She said, and something in her voice told him that any question on his side would lead to a row of major proportions.

He would have to talk to her about this strange behaviour, he knew that, but then it was her exams phase right now, and although she treated it with a nonchalance unheard of, perhaps there was still enough of the old Hermione left to cause these abrupt mood swings.

It was probably wrong to confront her now, he thought, with two written and one practical test waiting for her tomorrow. Perhaps everything would return to normal once that was done.

Although some little voice in the back of his mind told him that things usually didn't end up that easy.

"What are you working on?" She now asked, her eyes scanning the flood of books and parchments that covered his desk and the surrounding floor. Meticulous as they both were, they also tended to spread their work around them on every available surface so that the library often looked like a badly concealed chaos.

Usually, these periods of creative distribution lasted until Jane threatened them with huge litter boxes or even the fireplace.

"Minerva gave me her ideas about the landscape transfigurations necessary to hide Order members at Tintagel. We are now trying to work out how to dampen the magical signature on the transfigured areas to avoid drawing notice to them. So far, nothing helped."

Hermione hummed understandingly. "All those details," She said quietly. "And only one thing going wrong can mean the end of all our plans. Don't you worry, sometimes? Don't you wonder where the weak point may lie?"

Gazing up sharply at her, Severus saw nothing but a calm, interested face and strong hands that held the parchment with Minerva's research steadily. But acting was too much part of her flesh and bone by now, the projection of calm and control was to her like the glamours she used so regularly that she forgot she wore them.

He touched her mind tenderly, his thoughts carrying a soft question, and felt her barriers slide back hesitatingly. The sky above her palace of memory was dark with worry, and the grass under his feet made harsh sounds, as if it had frozen to ice and would break at the touch.

He felt his breath catch in his throat. If her thoughts looked like this, the problem was worse than he had assumed. He could see lightning gather in the black clouds above them, lightning strong enough to seemingly threaten the fragile buildings of her thoughts.

"You should hear them talk, Severus," She now whispered to his right, and when he turned around to her he saw a much younger Hermione than he had become used to, a first or second year with huge eyes and an ill fitting school uniform, speaking with a much older, tired voice.

The way she looked inside her mind told him her feelings more clearly than a thousand words could have, and he felt proud for a minute, proud that she trusted him enough to reveal her feelings of weakness and insecurity.

"Hear whom talk?" He asked softly.

She shrugged, a gesture that didn't fit the eager little girl whose body her mind had projected as host for her emotions. "Harry, Draco, all of them," She answered. "They are so sure that everything will go well. They are planning a future in which Voldemort is 'done with' and the wizarding world will be free. As if they don't realize that a single sleight of hand, a singly misstep can ruin everything."

From the corners of his eye, Severus could see the sky above him blacken and nodded inwardly in understanding, but he kept his gaze fixed on Hermione.

"They are young," He said quietly, his tone making very clear that he excluded Hermione from this category, despite her present appearance. Hermione wasn't young. Not in the ways that counted. Perhaps Harry might have reached that same frame of mind of understanding resignation, of mature hardness, had he not been sorted into carefree Gryffindor and surrounded by oh-so-normal friends. With Hermione, the same environment had only hastened this process of growing.

Now she was beyond that world of security and blind trust in the future that kept people like Harry Potter, Ron Weasley, or even in some ways Draco going and hoping.

She _knew_ that things could go terribly wrong no matter how hard you hoped for a good outcome. She knew that there was no guarantee for the light at the end of the tunnel. And the only fragment of her youth was this fear she felt now, this despair.

She understood what he meant, he saw it in the way she nodded instead of pointing out the obvious.

"Their lives are so frail," She now whispered. "Harry survived much, but he never saw the alternative. He never fully realized what they could have done to him. There is so much that could go wrong with what we plan. And yet they trust me blindly."

She stopped, half turning away from him to watch the landscape of her mind, and as if in answer to her searching eyes, the sky above them smoothed to a dark blue and the grass under his feet regained some of its softness.

"It's such a huge responsibility. _I_ introduced this plan, and if it fails, if _I_ fail, their death will be on my shoulders. I do not know if I…"

He nodded in understanding, not telling her that her feelings were only reasonable, not trying to minimize them by recounting how often he had felt this very same way.

In a way, he was relieved. If this was the thing that had worried her over the past weeks, if all her strange behaviour resulted from this fear, then he could understand.

"You will never fail, Hermione," He told her, his voice rich and decided and laced with all the confidence he could offer. "If I have learned anything about you in the past months, it is that you go through with everything you want, that you achieve everything you plan."

She looked up at him, suddenly, her eyes too old in the face of an eleven-year-old girl with bushy hair. There was something in them he couldn't name, some hope or fear that darkened the chocolate brown of her iris to a stormy black, but clearly she listened to his every word, clearly it gave her what she needed.

"You will stand strong, and proud, with those who love you by your side, and there will be nothing that can stop you until our task is done."

"You think so?" She whispered, half afraid, half relieved.

"I know so," He answered. "For I know you."

And in front of his eyes, she grew to the woman he had come to love, grew back to the confident woman she had become, and stepped into his embrace, her body melting against his own. He closed his eyes and slowly withdrew from her mind, only to find their bodies locked in the same embrace back in his library, where he could feel the warm air playing on his skin and smell her unique scent.

"We will win," He told her, feeling her content sigh against his chest. "And there will be peace, and time for ourselves, and no reason to hide any longer."

"I love you, Severus," She whispered. "I wouldn't know what to do without you."

Tenderly, he kissed the top of her head, enjoying the silken feeling of her hair against his skin. Then, he released her, cupping her cheek for a moment before letting her go completely.

"I love you, too, Hermione," He answered. "And now drink your juice before it gets cold!"

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"Gather ye rosebuds while ye may" is the beginning of Robert Herrick's poem: "To the Virgins, to make much of Time".

I thank you all for your reviews, deeply! I read and enjoy every single one of them, and at the moment they are the only thing that motivates me to write after a long day of work! So keep them coming ;-)


	62. Accomplishments

**A/N:** This one took too long, I know, and there's too little happening in it for the long wait. But this is the last of those transitory chapters, I promise. The next one will see a major plot twist, and a dark one at that. So enjoy the fluff and the happiness while it's coming…

And thank you all for your feedback and reviews. I know that I'm lousy at reacting and replying at the moment, but please forgive me. I promise it will change once my exams are done with and I'm as graduated as Harry and Hermione.

On to the show, then!

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**Accomplishments**

"_Outstandings_ in every subject," Draco commented, proud and envious at the same time. "And you didn't even study!"

Hermione shrugged. "I told you I would pass," She answered lightly, obviously not thinking much of her results. Yet another difference to the old Hermione.

Then, she raised her glass (orange juice for her, wine for the others). "Congratulations to you both," She said. "And here's to growing up!"

Draco laughed. "Screw growing up," He answered. "Here's to my two honorary Slytherins who managed to survive in the lion's den."

Harry, too, raised his glass, but the expression in his eyes was graver than Draco's "Here's to surviving seven years of Voldemort," He said quietly. "And to finishing him off before another year passes."

"Hear, hear," Draco agreed quietly, and they drank.

Although exams had finished a week ago and he had received his marks this morning, Draco still found it difficult to believe that school was over, forever. No lessons, no hastily scribbled essays or boring lectures about runes, wards or correct wand movements anymore.

Learning wouldn't stop for him, of course, but it would now happen on a whole new level. He wasn't a student anymore. He was an apprentice.

Or at least he would be one, once the official celebrations and the Leaving Feast were over. Three more days, and then he could leave the Slytherin dorms and move into his comfortable apartment not too far from Mistress Rosen's Potions lab.

Three more days, and he would escape the continuous scrutiny of his House, testing him for the right pureblood attitude, looking towards him for guidance, for the ultimate loyalty to their Lord.

Instead, he would be the inhabitant of a castle empty of anyone but Order members and those firmly on Dumbledore's side, empty of anyone without a Triggered Obliviate protecting their thoughts, of anyone who could betray him.

Draco couldn't help himself. He sighed happily.

"Life's going to become so much easier," He announced to the world in general, and heard Harry snort in amused agreement.

"Just imagine how much more time I'll have once I can stop complaining about the injustice of it all," He answered. "And I'll finally have a room of my own – as much as I like the boys, continuously pretending in front of Seamus and Dean really got on my nerves."

Hermione smiled at them, her brown eyes, unreadable, and said nothing.

"I suppose you'll move in with Severus full time?" Draco asked. "Not that you haven't been living together for months, anyway, but you'll make it official, now?"

Hermione nodded. "I will keep a room in Headquarters, of course," She said. "Just in case people from the Outer Circle are curious.

"Just imagine," Harry said. "Now we can finally limp to our own bathroom's after training without pretending that we come home from a boring studying session. That was the worst, really, acting as if my knee wasn't all swollen and hurting."

"Yes, that's definitely a relief," Hermione agreed thoughtfully, and Harry blushed when he remembered that she'd hidden wounds much worse long before he had begun to.

For a moment Draco wondered what information she would be feeding Voldemort over the next months. Now that the obstacle of being in school was removed, she wouldn't be able to claim absence from the Order meeting, and the Death Eaters would expect her to learn more about the Order's activities.

But he wouldn't ask about that tonight. Tonight was for celebrations, and for being nostalgic, and for getting drunk.

He hadn't gotten drunk since his allegiances had changed, for the same reason as Hermione – he couldn't risk letting slip something. He sighed again and sipped his wine. So much had changed…

As if Harry had listened in on his thoughts, he looked up to them, a grin suddenly lightening his face up. "Who'd have thought a year ago we'd be sitting here together, celebrating our graduation in Severus' private gym…"

"Not me," Draco declared decisively. "Never in a hundred lifetimes."

Although he had to admit, silently, that he had started wondering about Potter by then. He had been friends with Hermione for nearly a year, after all, and her loyalty towards the Boy Who Lived had been a constant irritation to him.

"I'd never have hoped for it," Hermione said quietly, her eyes moving from one to the other. Her face was expressionless to most, but Draco could see how much this meant to her, this new trio that had replaced the one torn apart so painfully. "And I certainly never expected you two to get along so well. It's frightening, really."

"Yeah, well, we're going to be the terror of the civilized world, once Voldemort's dead," Harry announced, grinning at Draco. "And we'll make sure to leave a trail of heart attacks and gobsmacked faces behind us while we can. I'm half tempted to openly declare our friendship at the graduation ceremony and watch the ensuing chaos."

Hermione pursed her lips in mock annoyance, but Draco could see mirth dancing in her eyes.

"I believe that the wild mixture of Voldemort and Dumbledore sympathizers among the parents should create more than enough chaos as it is," She commented dryly. "Not to mention every single Weasley that walks the earth."

Draco shuddered. "I'm only glad they can't embarrass me in public yet."

"Oh, they will get their chance at that soon enough," Harry answered, clearly amused.

"Will your mother be there, too, Draco?" Hermione asked, her tone perfectly neutral. As was her face, Draco noticed when he glanced at her.

"Of course," He answered. "She won't miss a chance to brag about her son and heir, will she?" He answered, nearly managing to keep the bitterness out of his voice. "She'll be sitting with the usual group of pureblood ex-Slytherins, I suppose."

Somehow, Draco wasn't sure how, but Slytherin males certainly weren't the only ones with a special tendency to develop good information networks, Drac's mother had found out about Hermione and his father. Apparently she had raged for three days and even forgot herself enough to send Draco a rather unguarded letter about that mudblood slut he had been socialising with.

Draco was rather sure that only the scandal and further disgrace which would have followed had kept her from publicising it.

"I'll make sure not to meet her then," Hermione said lightly. "Are Mrs Parkinson and Mrs Zabini coming, too?"

"As far as I know, all mothers will be there," He said. "But don't even try to get near them, Hermione, They are a closely knit circle, and they don't know anything important anyway, if I judge from my mother."

"You wouldn't seriously consider spying at the graduation ceremony!" Harry protested, obviously shocked, and Draco grinned.

Although he had improved a lot, Harry was still a Gryffindor in his instincts.

"If there was something worth finding out? Of course," Hermione shrugged. "Besides, I don't need more than half my mind while I give the speech, and I will have eye contact with most of the hall."

"Some of them may be trained in Occlumency, at least enough to detect you," Draco warned. "They _are_ pureblood women."

Hermione nodded, conceding his point.

"What about collecting samples of their magical signatures then – most of them seldom visit a place where we could nick glasses and cutlery," Hermione said, but Harry groaned loudly, interrupting her.

"Oh _come on,_ Hermione," He said, deliberately whining like a ten-year-old that had been refused a toy. "It's graduation weekend! We got our results today, no more school ever, and still Moody has been slaving us the whole afternoon! It's a miracle that we managed to get away from the Common Room, and tomorrow we'll be stuck with our houses. We _are_ entitled to a bit of fun! Why are you so tense tonight?"

Hermione smiled, and a tension Draco hadn't even noticed left the room.

"And why are you so relaxed?" She asked back. "You have known we'd get the results today for weeks, and school has stopped a fortnight ago!"

"It's _graduation weekend_," Harry said as if that explained everything, and Draco sighed in mock irritation. "We've finished school, and I got enough NEWTs to do whatever I want to, and for the first time in my life it really looks as if I'm going to live long enough to actually choose something. What's not to be relaxed about?"

Draco saw Hermione's face darken for a moment, becoming old and tired and incredibly sad before she smoothed it again. Silently, he had to agree. The fact that Harry treated this so lightly didn't mean that it wasn't a shame.

Again he wondered how he could have ever believed the Boy Who Lived to be a superficial, cocky braggart.

"There's still the battle," Hermione pointed out, although she did it reluctantly. She probably didn't want to ruin Harry's uncommonly good mood. "It may be months off yet, but we should keep it in mind anyway."

"I know that you won't like to hear this," Harry said. "Considering that one of you is a cold hearted Slytherin and the other a cold hearted genius," He smiled at them. "But all that's not so terrifying sine I know you two are with me. When I found out that it was my task to kill Voldemort, back in fifth year, I was frozen with fear, and I think I stayed that way the whole of our sixth year. I always thought that I'd have to deal with him alone, that it was my destiny, he or I. And although you and Ron _were_ good friends," He said with an excusing look towards Hermione. "I never thought you would be there at the end."

He smiled again. "Now I know I won't be alone. You two will be there, and Severus, and Ron, and the rest of the Order. Compared to a battle one on one with the most dangerous Dark Lord in all history, that doesn't look too bad."

He grinned even broader, obviously willing to end his impromptu speech with the cheesiest comment ever.

"As long as we're together, nothing really bad can happen," He announced as if it were a dogmatic truth.

Draco sniffed disapprovingly, and sneered a bit, and in general did all those things that said clearly what a sentimental nonsense that was while telling Harry that he just acted as a decent Slytherin had to, and Harry laughed and refilled their wineglasses, and laughed some more and started to talk about the graduation feast again.

But something wasn't right, and it took Draco a while to see what.

Usually, Hermione treated these sort of sloppy declarations with a hug and a cuddle, smiling delightedly and being embarrassed simultaneously.

But this time, the hug never came. While Harry and Draco talked, she was sitting on the floor quietly, suddenly looking very small, and the only thing she hugged while the evening progressed were her own knees, which she pressed to her chest as if she needed some sort of comfort.

Whatever the reason, something in Harry's little speech had obviously distressed her deeply.

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It was a quarter to four when Harry and Ron knocked on the door to the Head Girl's room.

It felt quite strange when she opened them, wearing the usual school uniform, her shoes polished to mirror level and her smile excited and expectant. He had seldom seen her in this room over the last weeks, and her school girl personality had paled in comparison to the Master Spy he had spent so much of the last months with.

„Ready?" She asked. „Oh, I'm so excited! I practised my speech the whole night, but I'm afraid I won't get the stressing right. Perhaps if I go over it one more time? I read in a book once that there's…"

„Hermione," Harry interrupted her incessant chatter with a grin of wry amusement. „We are alone."

„Oh," She answered, and her face relaxed immediately. Looking around the Common Room, she nodded towards Neville, Ron and Ginny, who would accompany her brother down and then sit with the rest of the Weasley family. „Shall we go then?"

They kept mostly silent on their way to the Great Hall, with Harry and Ron inconspicuously rubbing various hurting body parts. The Order training had yet increased over the last week, and little aches were nothing any of them even mentioned these days.

„I can't wait to get it over with," Hermione murmured while they descended the moving staircase. „Then we only have another two days and it will be good bye for know-it-all-Hermione. She's irritating even me."

„Don't you insult my friends," Harry chided her playfully and she chuckled, appreciating the joke.

„What will you say in your speech, Hermione?" Neville asked.

She shrugged. „The usual, I guess. We're all so very happy and proud, yada yada, this is a dark time, but we're all gonna do our duty. Thank you to all our teachers etc."

"Oh," Neville answered, clearly not sure what to make of this rather disinterested summary. "Sounds nice."

"Appropriate," She agreed calmly. "But what can I say? I just live to serve."

"Really," Harry drawled in a perfect copy of Draco, and Hermione laughed. "If that's the case, I have a list somewhere…"

"I don't think that…" Hermione began, only to continue without pause in a tone completely different. "Finishing school means that we have to study less hard. On the contrary! If you really want to get into the auror programme, that means a summer of hard work, you two!"

Even Ron was experienced enough to just roll his eyes by now. "Give it a break, Hermione," He moaned. "Today's our graduation feast – can't we talk about something else for once?"

Hermione huffed, sent a suffering glance to the seventh year Ravenclaws that had appeared in a corridor to their left, as if to say _See what I have to put up with?_, and let them onwards to the Great Hall.

When they arrived, the Entrance Hall was swarming with people. Only students who had graduated, their family and closest friends were allowed, but considering that pureblood wizards tended to draw their family trees on living room walls to have enough space for all their cousins twice removed, that didn't say a lot.

They kept to the side a bit, since Hermione didn't do well in large crowds and he himself had been trained to the point by now that he got itchy, too, whenever his back wasn't safely protected by a wall.

As they silently watched the chaos an optimist might have called a wizarding assembly, they saw friends and acquaintances float by, surrounded by their family, chattering happily and basking in the proud gazes of their fathers and mothers.

Neville left them to join his grandmother and a host of other persons Harry had never seen in his life, but who sported the same dirty brown hair and round chin that Neville had complained about so often.

Ginny and Ron went off in search for their family, who would probably make it only at the last minute, as usual. Over the years, the Weasley clan had perfected the art of nearly being too late to a point that Harry found astonishing time and time again.

Soon, only Harry and Hermione were leaning against the wall, watching the crowds form, part and rearrange silently. It seemed as if they were the only ones in all of Hogwarts without family tonight.

As if she had heard his thought, Hermione stepped a bit closer and their hands found each other, hidden by the folds of their formal robes. Harry smiled. No blood family, perhaps, but family in all that mattered.

Harry's grip tightened around her hand for a moment when they saw Draco and his mother drift by, Draco sneering at them and his mother with her usual disgusted expression of smelling something foul on her face.

It hurt to be so distant, even though he knew it was necessary.

When Narcissa Malfoy had halfway passed them however, something changed. Against her will and every pureblood tradition he had ever heard of, her eyes fell on Hermione's face and her smooth pace slowed for a moment.

Harry knew better than to turn and look at Hermione, but he could see her face from the corner of his visual field, and the expression of cold arrogance, of mocking challenge made him bite his lip to hide his amusement.

On the other side of the entrance hall, Draco had taken the arm of his mother, whose manners were steadily crumbling under an onslaught of jealous fury, and led her away, speaking softly and very fast.

"Well, that was fun," Hermione whispered once the two had vanished from their sight.

Harry opened his mouth to tell her just how rotten her concept of fun was, but then the Weasley clan was upon them and for a while neither of them could do anything but hug and be hugged and be fussed over by Molly and Arthur Weasley, receive manly slaps on the back from the elder brothers and a kiss on the cheek from Ginny.

It was all rather overwhelming.

But somehow the scheduled time for fussing passed and they were finally ushered into the Great Hall that had been decorated splendidly for this day of days. House banners were moving softly in a magical wind, and the house tables had been substituted by rows and rows of chairs.

Harry nodded respectfully towards the Weasley parents and waited patiently while Ron received a last reserve of hugs, praises and mocking comments (the last from the twins, who had used the socialising time in the entrance hall hand out special graduation offers behind the back of their mother). Then, the three of them headed to the front, where seats had been reserved for the former seventh years of Hogwarts.

Dumbledore's speech was long and full of humorous reminiscences. It seemed that even the leader of the Order of the Phoenix had decided to forget about politics for tonight. Somehow, that fact touched Harry deeply.

His wish of normalcy had nearly been forgotten in the months of training and planning, but tonight he was as close to that normal Harry as he could ever hope for. Just a student among many celebrating their graduation.

Then the houses had to step up to the platform usually occupied by the teacher's tables, and their Heads of Houses began handing out the certificates.

Slytherin was first, and it was strange to see the usual group of students clothed in pale green without their dark haired, hook nosed teacher. Severus had become so much a part of Hogwarts in Harry's mind that his absence surprised him even now, months after he had resigned.

In a way he was sorry that he wouldn't be here tonight, to see Hermione and Draco graduate, but they had all agreed that the risk was too great, what with an unknown number of would-be or real Death Eaters in the room.

As she walked up to the platform besides him, Harry could see Hermione's eyes dart over the crowd, just as they had done the moment they had reached the Entrance Hall. She had been part of the Order team in charge of tonight's security, and had assured him that everything was safe.

Still, she seemed unwilling to take a risk by letting go of her vigilance even for a moment. It was impressive how her eyes captured every corner of the room without seeming to do so. She looked like nothing but an excited school girl about to give her speech.

Professor McGonagall was waiting for them on the platform, a heap of sealed scrolls hovering by her side.

Her face was still stern and her lips thin, but there was definitely something more than the usual cool professionalism in her face as she handed out their certificates.

"I am proud of you," She finally said when everyone was pressing their scroll to their bodies. "Godric Gryffindor himself would be proud of you."

Harry met her eyes and smiled, and for a moment, she allowed herself to smile back. Both knew that they would be back at Headquarters tomorrow, planning and scheming together like the colleagues they had been for months, but tonight she was his teacher one last time, and he was glad that she was proud of him.

All but Hermione left the platform to resume their seats. She remained standing by McGonagall's side, small and nervous in a very obvious way.

Hermione was introduced as both Head Girl and top student of the year, then McGonagall patted her back in a manner that was meant to be supporting, cast a _sonorus_ on her, and suddenly she was standing there all alone.

"Today," She began after a moment, all eyes on her. "Is a day of changes. We who will graduate tonight have reached the end of a journey. And the beginning of the next, far larger and more difficult one."

She paused, and in the silence of the audience Harry understood that she had decided to do more than give the happy little speech required from the Head Girl. She had decided to tell them the truth, hidden behind sentences vague enough to be harmless.

He could see Neville and Ginny straighten up in their seats, their faces becoming solemn and mature, and knew that hey, too, understood what Hermione was doing. From the corner of his eye, he noticed the condescending smile on Draco's face flicker for a moment, before being replaced by a sneer.

Harry looked back to the front and met Hermione's eyes for a moment. He was glad she was doing this, was going to make it meaningful for them all. He didn't want to look back at their graduation feast as one of the superficial acts he had had to go through. He wanted it to be memorable.

"In the last seven years, we have grown from children awed by the world around us to adults ready and responsible to change this world for the better. We learned much," She paused, her eyes slowly travelling over their classmates. "Especially that we will never learn enough," She added with a twist of dry humour, and appreciating laughter ran through the rows of students.

"On our way to this moment, we have discovered friendships we had never hoped for and found ourselves in conflicts we had never expected."

The memory of a bossy little girl flashed before Harry's eyes, lecturing him sternly about rulebreaking, cowering in a bathroom to hide from a grown mountain troll, and the picture of a little boy with a pointy, arrogant face and white blond hair, who stretched out his hand in greeting.

"Not all have made it till here," She said, and while others around Harry probably remembered those who had dropped from school after their OWLs, he remembered Cedric Diggory, and Theodore Nott.

"But those who did learned to become more than they were. We learned when it is necessary to listen to others, and when the rules must be bent a bit."

Those who had been part of the DA chuckled at that, and Harry could see Professor McGonagall avert her face for a moment to hide her amusement.

"We learned when to trust. And when not to trust."

Severus' face flashed in front of Harry's eyes, closely followed by that of Ron.

"And some of us had to change despite their own will. Some of us had to bow to necessities. Some suffered injustice. Some of us nearly gave up."

She straightened, and, suddenly, for the first time since she had begun to speak, she smiled. From the corner of his eyes Harry saw that his classmates were entranced, that they were hanging onto her lips.

These years hadn't been easy even for those who'd never been involved in the war, even for those who had had no idea about the hidden and dark world he had involved his friends in again and again. But even those who didn't know remembered the basilisk, the dementors, and Umbridge. Even they had been miserably and homesick and bullied by others.

"But today," She said, her voice warm and confident. "We are here. No matter what we feared in our darkest hours, we made it. And today everything we have done will be honoured and recognized.

"From today onwards, we will be adults. We will have the freedom to choose our own path now. And we will have the duty to do so."

Her eyes now took in the back rows of parents and family, then travelled along the line of teachers.

"We are thankful to those who guarded and protected us till here. But from now, we will be on our own. Soon their task will become our own. And that we are here today, that the people who educated us are here with us today, shows that we are ready to do it."

She paused, and smiled again.

"I wish you all the very best in life. May a smooth path lie before you all."

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**A/N**: I apologize for each and every mistake that's probably sneaked into this – once I've got more time I'll go over the chapters once again.

The next update should be up in about two weeks. Stay tuned for 'Had I Known', too – there should be a new chapter in a few days, if RL cooperates.

That said: Review!


	63. Then We Are Decided

**A/N**: This chapter is the beginning of the dark plot twists I've been harping on about forever. Nothing too disturbing in it, yet, but I will post individual warnings at the beginnings of the next chapters.

There's a listening recommendation attached to this chapter: James Blunt's ‚Goodbye My Lover' captures perfectly the emotions I tried to create when writing this. And please check my lifejournal for answers to your questions and a preview to the next chapter that should be up in about a week.

I sincerely hope none of you will hate me at the end of the chapter – I warn you beforehand that this is the worst cliffhanger I've ever written… 

Review!

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**Silent Noon**

Your hands lie open in the long fresh grass, -

The finger-points look through like rosy blooms:

Your eyes smile peace. The pasture gleams and glooms

'Neath billowing skies that scatter and amass.

All round our nest, far as the eye can pass,

Are golden kingcup-fields, with silver edge

Where the cow-parsley skirts the hawthorn-hedge.

'Tis visible silence, still as the hour-glass.

Deep in the sun-searched growths the dragon-fly

Hangs like a blue thread loosened from the sky: -

So this wing'd hour is dropt to us from above.

Oh! Clasp we to our hearts, for deathless dower,

This close-companioned inarticulate hour

When twofold silence was the song of love.

_Dante Gabriel Rossetti_

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**Then We Are Decided**

Hermione awoke to the delicious feeling of warmth spooned against her. Her mind identified Severus' scent and breathing pattern before instincts could rear their heads, and she relaxed into the embrace of her sleeping lover.

The summer sun was shining through the wide-open window, which was warded against any intruder that might try to enter their bedroom, and painted golden lights onto the ceiling.

Slowly, she turned around inside the loose embrace Severus' arms held her in until she could see him clearly, their noses nearly touching.

After all these mornings they had awoken together, the sight of his face, so unguarded and soft in sleep, his slightly open lips that only now showed their fullness, the elegant line of his brow and his jaw still touched something inside her, a deep, unending well of feelings that made her heart ache with raw longing.

She didn't know which emotion was stronger, the happiness she felt when she looked at him like this, or the fear that something might happen to him, that this fragile thing she held in her hands – his heart – might be crushed by the future.

She wanted to cry and laugh at the same time, rest her head on his chest eternally and yank away from him.

She could feel his breath softly tickling her forehead, and she sighed contentedly.

Whatever Draco and Harry might wish for the future, whatever they were looking forward to when Voldemort would be gone, she didn't care one thing about it.

This was everything she wanted.

He was her peace, her hope, the one thing she had never dared to long for, and fate had given him to her willingly.

What more could she want? What more than this closeness of mind, body and soul? Even a thousand years of pain and terror would be a price worth to pay for this.

Only that it would end. Very soon. One way or the other.

Hermione rested her hand on his arm, so softly that she didn't disturb his sleep, and tried to concentrate on the moment, to drive away the tightness in her throat.

She was worried.

No, not that. She was terrified. And there was no place for worrying or uncertainty, for she knew exactly what would happen. What she would do.

She had carried around the weight of that knowledge for the last weeks, the ever increasing certainty of what would have to be done. It had nearly crushed her more than once, that weight.

The others had been blind to her growing fear and sorrow, even Severus, who knew her better than anybody else, had attributed her behaviour to the wrong reasons.

But then there were a lot of things going on – graduation, school leaving, preparations for the battle -, and how could anybody know that they didn't matter to her on a more than theoretical level? How could anybody know that her goodbyes, her nostalgia, her sudden mood swings were more than a reaction to the end of school, and the beginning of a new life?

She was glad that they hadn't noticed, or that they had drawn the wrong conclusions. She _could_ do this, but she wasn't sure if she could bear doing it against the explicit will of her friends and family.

Her grip tightened on his arm and he moved, his body tensing slightly as he assessed the situation before even opening his eyes. He relaxed, and Hermione knew that he had checked the wards and found them intact, had checked the area around them and found them alone.

It was the same procedure she went through every time she woke. She knew it by heart.

"Good morning, love," She whispered and saw his eyes open slowly, his face light up with the bright, content smile that she had seen every morning since they had begun sleeping together.

It had surprised her time and again how happy the simple fact of her presence in his bed could make him. This time, it broke her heart.

"Good morning," He answered, and she could feel the soft vibrations of his voice travel from her hand through her whole body, filling her with a strange, throbbing tension.

"I dreamed about you," He now said and she rested her head on his chest, her nose digging into his warm skin, to avoid his eyes.

"I hope it was pleasant," She commented lightly.

He chuckled in the unguarded, relaxed manner he had only when just woken, before the tensions of the day descended onto his shoulders.

"Very," He answered. "Do you remember what you asked me, long ago, when Harry and Weasley had just discovered your double life? You asked me whether we'd ever be free, without a war around us and more secrets than we could bear. You asked me whether we'd ever be able to walk in the light and shed our masks and roles."

"Yes," She whispered, not trusting her voice to speak any louder. "I remember."

She could _feel_ him smile down on her mop of unruly morning hair.

"Tonight I dreamed it," He said softly. "We were much older. There was silver in your hair, and your eyes were surrounded by wrinkles, but you were still as beautiful as you are today. I dreamed that we woke up together, just as we did now. And there were birds singing in the courtyard, and the sun was warm on our faces. And somehow I knew that we had lived in peace for a long time, together, without fear. It was wonderful. I wish you had dreamed it, too."

Against the safety of his body, Hermione pressed her eyes shut tightly. She would _not_ cry now. She would not break down and tell him everything. There was too much at stake to give in to this desperate wish of making his dream come real.

If she told him now, there _would _be no peace. There would be war, and killing, and constant fears that would carve out her loved ones' souls one by one, until they were hollow puppets, warriors that wouldn't know what to do with peace at their doors.

She wouldn't let that happen. Not because she wanted to share his dream, not because she didn't want this to end.

"It sounds wonderful," She whispered. "I wish I had been there."

_I wish it would be possible, Severus_, She thought deep in her palace of memory.

"You will," He said, softly but with a deep conviction that echoed through her chest. "We will be there together."

And Hermione nodded, pressed against his body in a desperate attempt to gain some warmth, some hope from the contact, knowing that it was in vain.

There was no hope for her.

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It was an unusually excited Albus Dumbledore that greeted them at the customary Order meeting.

"We are ready," He announced when they had barely seated themselves. "The training schedule has reached a point where we are confident that the task can be done, our research at Tintagel is complete and the cooperation with the aurors stands as sure as it will ever be."

Cheers went up around the table, and Dumbledore smiled at them full of pride and enthusiasm. Severus snorted in mock disgust, but secretly he couldn't help admiring the old man. Three lifetimes' worth of pain, sorrow and darkness, and still he hadn't resigned to reality.

He still believed he could stretch his hand out to the moon and pluck it like a Sherbert Lemon. And perhaps he could.

While part of his consciousness amused itself with Albus, another – and by far the larger, he had to admit – part basked in the warmth that was Hermione's presence to his right. As if she could feel his thoughts on him, she turned her face towards him and smiled, but didn't open the mental connection they usually shared.

He hadn't seen her since this morning, when he had woken up to her smile. It had been necessary for her to go down and take breakfast with her housemates, since there was no longer any last minute studying or Head Girl's duties to be used as excuses for her absence.

He had been reluctant to let her go, knowing that she would have to spend the day with those dunderheads instead of him. But there was enough work to do and enough plans to consider to make it a worthwile day, even without her by his side.

As Albus had just announced to the whole Order, their battle plans were coming along nicely. Harry and Weasley were, of course, far from the level of duelling they would need to survive Halloween, but they had four more months to drill the necessary spells and instincts into them, and his sadistic side was certainly looking forward to the experience.

Not to mention that the absence of students for the next months and the chance to tighten security at Hogwarts, would simplify their task enormously. That, and the fact that their younger members had now finished school officially.

Severus smirked at the thought. There would be no relevant excuses to leave the gym from now on. He wondered when Harry and Weasley would find out that having graduated meant nothing more than being forced through eight hours of training a day.

Dumbledore waited until the Order had calmed down again, then raised his hand to indicate that he wasn't finished.

"We are ready," He repeated once more. "And so, it appears, is the Dark Lord."

The silence that fell over the table was strange after the exuberant reactions only moments before.

"As Miss Granger informed me, Voldemort ordered her to execute her plan and convince Mr Potter and Mr Weasley of a meeting on Halloween four nights ago. He is planning to ambush them with his Inner Circle and to kill Harry before he even knows what is happening."

Appreciative chuckling filled the room.

"Tonight, Miss Granger will visit him with the confirmation that Potter and Weasley have accepted her plan and will offer him the details we have been working on for the last weeks."

All of a sudden, Severus felt cold.

Voldemort had accepted her plan and ordered her to proceed. Dumbledore had been informed, and so was the Order.

But Severus hadn't known a thing about it.

He turned his head towards Hermione, slowly, so as to not attract attention to himself, but she was facing away from him, fully concentrating on the Headmaster's speech. Or so it seemed.

From the tight lines around her mouth and the way her body was leaning slightly away from him, he knew that she was aware of his eyes on her, was aware and worried.

But still she didn't look at him.

He straightened in his chair, creating much more noise than he was used to do, and saw several heads swivel towards him in automatic reaction.

Her face remained averted, all her outer attention fixed on the headmaster.

And she was too far away for a touch that would open their mental connection.

What the hell was going on?

Had he done something to anger her over the last days, something to lose him her trust?

But no, she had been tender and obviously content this very morning, and the only sign of trouble over the last weeks had been her sudden moments of darkness and withdrawing. And they _had_ talked about that, and he _had_ helped her relax after all.

If there was any problem between them, it wasn't even remotely important enough to justify her behaviour now. Not considering that she was far too professional to let their personal relationship hinder their work.

He was the Spymaster of the Order, Merlin be damned! He had to know everything, as soon as humanly possible, not to be informed at the same time as the dunderheads around them!

He cleared his throat, loudly, an obvious sign for her that they needed to talk, _now_, but although he could see her head twitch for a moment, as if following an old instinct, she stopped the movement before he could see more of her than the nape of her neck.

She didn't want to talk to him, then. She refused to communicate.

He hadn't felt that estranged from her, that lonely since Christmas, when she had threatened to leave his chambers for good. And as a thousand possible reasons for her behaviour flashed through his mind, as he assembled and dissembled explanations while seemingly listen to Albus with all his concentration, the surprise was slowly and steadily replaced by anger.

She had no right to place him in this position, to leave him out like some incompetent first year. She and Albus, happily plotting together in his office, exposing him like a clumsy idiot.

But Albus would of course have assumed that they had already discussed this, in detail, before she ever came to him with it. After all there were few in this Circle who didn't know how close they were these days, and who would ever except her to not to inform him about a thing of that importance.

Indeed, who would.

How could she do this to him?

And why?

They kept no secrets from each other, that was the foundation stone of their relationship, both private and professional, and this was no little fact to be forgotten or neglected in the grander scheme of things. She had willingly and consciously withheld information from him, and if he knew one thing about Hermione Granger, it was that she never did things without a reason.

But what reason could she have?

Again he replayed Albus' opening words from this meeting in his mind, again he remembered all the little incidents over the last weeks, every little situation in which she had behaved strangely, every word and gesture she had reacted to different than he had expected.

But this time, his pattern of perception allowed for more than exams worry, for more than the general difficulties of changing one's position in life. For more than just the fear she had admitted to him.

And again, he went cold all over, but this time it was with fear.

"Excuse me, Albus," Severus said, standing abruptly, only glad that his calm composure held in the face of his growing realization. "But Hermione and I have something to discuss. Now."

Albus looked just as confused as the rest of the Inner Circle members. They all knew well enough how closely the Spymaster and his master spy worked together, and that they had means of communication undetectable to everyone else. There had never been such a need to disrupt the meeting before, but Severus held his general's gaze calmly, not an ounce of his apprehension showing, and refused an explanation.

He would never have explained himself under normal circumstances, after all.

"Hermione," He repeated, calmly, and it was not a request.

Hermione seemed to consider refusing for a heartbeat, but then she obviously realized that it would be futile. He _would_ talk to her about this, before anything else would be decided.

So she nodded silently and followed him towards his office under the curious gazes of the Order.

He waited until the door had closed and the privacy wards sprung up, then whirled around to her and let his mask of control slide off. He must look furious, from Hermione's uncomfortable face, but he didn't care right now.

"What is the meaning of this?" He hissed. "Why didn't you inform me?"

She opened her mouth, her eyes innocent in the way that told him she was preparing a nice little cover story, and his anger rose another few degrees.

"And don't you lie to me! I know that this has nothing to do with carelessness or forgetfulness. You deliberately withheld vital information from me, and I want to know _why_."

She took a deep breath.

"You know why," She then said, in the voice she used in unavoidable confrontations.

"Spell it out for me."

"Severus…"

"_Hermione._ Tell me what you thought when you decided to lie to me."

She paled at the anger in his words, but then she nodded, visibly pulling herself together and assuming the concentrated coolness he had come to know so well over months of planning and reflecting.

This time, the expression on her face caused white-hot fury to course through his veins.

"The Dark Lord isn't patient," She said quietly. "When he ordered me to introduce the idea to Harry and Ron, it was clear that he wouldn't be willing to wait for the confirmation very long. If I stall much longer, he will become suspicious, but I know that you don't want us to fix the details too soon. Then there's also the fact that he'll probably want me to stay in his fortress for some time, now that I've finished school…"

"Don't," Severus pressed out between clenched teeth, a distant part of his mind vaguely surprised at how angry he could be. "I told you not to lie, Hermione. After what you did, the full truth is the least I deserve…"

He saw her eyes widen and knew the movement to be calculated, knew that she readied herself to protest in a moment

"I don't know what…"

"This isn't about _my worrying_," He interrupted her, unable to bear her act. "This is about your position in the Inner Circle, about the fact that the purebloods are enraged by your power and that even Lucius Malfoy won't protect you any longer. This is about the fact that you have unhinged the Death Eater hierarchy and that _you _are afraid that Voldemort has started noticing this finally."

Still her act was perfect, infuriatingly smooth, still she refused to admit what she had planned and thought, but he knew her too well by now, knew the intricate landscape of her face, the tiny signals of her hidden thoughts that even _her _abilities could not mask completely, and he saw.

He knew the truth.

It broke something inside him that he hadn't known existed.

"I…" She whispered, but this time he could hear the resignation in her voice.

"You fear that only your necessity for this plan to succeed has kept you alive for the last weeks," He continued, no understanding softening his voice although he had finally understood everything, the whole intricate lie she had woven around herself over the last weeks, had finally pierced through the mist she had conjured to hide her actions and herself.

"You fear that he has realized how much he is damaging his position with this open favouritism. And you fear that once you have brought him the confirmation of the plan, once your direct use for him has ended, he will give in to the wishes of his other servants. That he will dispose of you."

Silently, he wondered how he could even talk about this calmly. How he could stand here in this room with her, explaining to himself and to her how she had realized the likeliness of her own death and how she, instead of backing out while there was time, had planned carefully to hide this fact from him and everyone she knew.

How she had used all of her incredible intellect and abilities to ensure her own death.

"Isn't that what you thought?" He asked, his voice harsh. "Isn't that why you acted like you did? Because you knew that the moment Harry and Weasley had agreed, the moment you had fixed a date and a place with them and handed this information over to Voldemort, your life wouldn't be worth a knut to him? Because you _knew_ that he wouldn't let you leave in peace when so many of the purebloods were panting for your blood? Not when he had to stabilize and increase his power base for the very plan you proposed to succeed?"

For a moment he expected her to bolt from the room as she had tried to do so many months ago, back when he had betrayed her trust and entered her mind without permission.

_But this time it is me who was betrayed_.

"That is _one_ possibility," She finally admitted after a long moment of tense silence. "And I admit that I worried about that. But it isn't likely. By killing me he would still risk the plan to fail. After all Harry and Ron would become suspicious if I left before the Leaving Feast and didn't return until Halloween. I don't think that he would allow this to happen, no matter what the Inner Circle said."

He could hear and see that she didn't believe in her own words, that the only reason for her to say this was to calm him, as if he was some trembling pet that needed reassurance. As if he was Harry or Draco, naively worrying about her safety.

"You can't even fool yourself," He heard himself say, shocked at the disgust in his voice, as shocked as she seemed to be. "We both know that Voldemort would never risk his power base, not even for the most brilliant plan of all times. He is far too clever for that. And we both know that there are ways around that risk, don't we? Letters he can force you to write, false assurances he can send that would fool your friends easily. The risk would be far greater if he let you return here.

"You know that going there tonight will most likely mean your death."

The silence between them stretched until it was unbearable, a huge mountain rising, carrying everything they had shared before out of sight.

"Yes," She finally admitted, a word choked out from a throat tight with sorrow. "I know."

"And so you lied to me, have been lying to me for the past months, hoping that I wouldn't find out until it was too late, that I wouldn't watch closely enough to see the signs?"

"I…"

"You listened to your friends plan their future, knowing exactly that you wouldn't have one? Hell, you listened to _me_ talking about _our_ future, this very morning, and you acted as if you honestly believed me! You fooled everyone who loves you, only to make sure that this _plan_ of yours will succeed?"

Somehow along the way his reproach had turned into a desperate plea, and the distant part of his mind that always stayed aloof, watching critically whatever was happening, cringed in shame at how utterly foolish he was behaving, begging her like a husband whose wife had betrayed him.

He didn't care how he sounded. He didn't care that she had exposed him to the scorn of the Order. All he cared about was in this room, all he wanted was for her to abandon this mad strategy of hers, to admit that she _wanted_ to live, that she wouldn't sacrifice herself after all they had shared, if only for him.

"How could you _do _this to me, Hermione?" He whispered, his voice nothing like the smooth and controlled thing he had trained for so many years.

Slowly, her eyes rose to meet his, slowly the hands she had clenched to fists at her side relaxed.

"I will do what must be done, Severus," She said.

"No…" He whispered, not believing that he had lost her like this, not believing that she would give up what they had so easily. "You can't be serious about this, Hermione."

"I will do what must be done," She repeated, and if anything the conviction and determination in her eyes grew. "Nothing will stop me from ending this war. Nothing."

"No. I won't allow it," He whispered, no, yelled, at the same time knowing that he had lost. She had decided, it seemed, had decided against him and Draco and Harry, had decided against living.

Had decided to do her duty.

And the fact that he refused to accept her decision seemed to cause nothing but irritation in her, now that they had fought and the Ice Queen had won.

"We agreed that you wouldn't interfere with my work as long as it wasn't done," She pointed out. Coldly. Controlled.

"You deceived me. You betrayed me, both as your partner and your Spymaster," He answered just as coldly, not caring that she flinched as if he had slapped her, that she stumbled backwards a step as if his words were a physical thing, a barrier between them.

It was she who had created the barrier, after all.

"After what you did," He continued. "I consider all agreements null and void, Hermione. You crossed that bridge, and I will act accordingly."

"Severus," She whispered, for the first time in their talk showing the pain that she must feel. But he was far beyond caring by now.

"Don't 'Severus' me!" He hissed. "You knew that I wouldn't agree, you _knew_ that I wouldn't let you risk your life in such a harebrained way, and instead of doing the right thing you tricked me into a situation beyond my control, hoping that I wouldn't react quickly enough."

"But don't you agree that this is the only way of guaranteeing the plan will work?" She whispered. "Don't you see that Voldemort would become suspicious if I didn't inform him personally? And even if I managed to avoid him for now, what about the next months? I _can't_ stop obeying his calls. He would know immediately that something was wrong!"

"Tell him that Potter and Weasley haven't decided yet," Snape demanded in cold fury. "Tell him that you have to stay close to them to convince them. Tell him that they decided to take a tour of the world and want you to accompany them. Tell him whatever you want, just don't go there tonight and hand him your head on a silver platter!"

"He would abandon his plan if they appeared hesitant," Hermione protested, real desperation now visible in her voice. "He would never believe me! And he won't go through with this if he hasn't months and months of secure planning! Not to mention that he would never be easy with me still close to them, with the chance of me suddenly feeling remorse and spilling everything to the Order! This is the only way to make the plan work, don't you…"

"I DON'T CARE ABOUT THE PLAN, HERMIONE!" He shouted, and she flinched violently in surprise. "I don't care that we can stop him once and for all if it means that you have to sacrifice your life! If you go there tonight you are as good as dead, and I will not allow that! Never!"

"This isn't like you, Severus," She whispered, her face pale and her lips trembling. "Wasn't it you who told me not to care so much about people, to get the job done no matter what it cost? Wasn't it you who taught me that about spying?"

"Yes," He, too, whispered, but it could have been a shout for all the intensity and determination in his voice. "But it seems that I changed my mind. I. Will. Not. Let. You. Die. Hermione. Not to save the Order, not even to save the world. To hell with them all! I will not let you die!"

The stare she fixed him with wasn't one he had ever seen on her face before. They locked eyes for what seemed an eternity, both their minds hidden by steel doors, both their expressions determined and cold.

Then, her shoulders slumped and she turned her face away from him.

"What will you do then?" She asked, her voice old with defeat.

"Go out there and tell them that it is too dangerous," He replied curtly, too hurt by what she had planned to forgive her easily. "Once they hear what you had planned, they will certainly agree with me. I am sure that we can find an alternative, but even if we don't, I know that nobody in that room will want to sacrifice you to make your plan succeed."

She was silent for a long time, her face still hidden in the shadows of his office, her body trembling in a way that told him of the chaos whirling through her mind right now.

He waited for her to turn around in silence, to agree and follow him out of his office, but as the minutes passed and her stance didn't change, he turned away from her and stretched out his hand to open his door.

"I'm sorry, Severus," She told his back. "I'm so sorry."

The reply that she had better be died in his mouth as he noticed the strange tone of her voice, and he whirled around, his hand raised in defiance.

But it was too late. Her wand was aiming at him and the determination in her eyes was like diamond.

Before he could speak, protest or even move, it was done.

"Imperio," She whispered, and his world sank into the black waters of Lethe.

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	64. On the Edge of Doom

A/N: By Merlin, this chapter was really hard to write. I understand that you hoped for a solution to the twist developed in the last chapter, but I'm afraid that won't happen so fast. 

If you want a hint about how this story is going to end (happy or not), please tell me in a review or visit my lifejournal to discuss it there. Depending on your wishes, I am going to post a few hints at lifejournal (access via the homepage-link on my profile) and mark them heavily as 'spoilers'.

And thank you all for your reviews - they made me update much faster than I had intended to (see? Talking to the author really works!)

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**On the Edge of Doom**

For once, Harry was united with everyone else in the room in his confusion. He wondered what the hell was going on in Severus' office, what had caused their always controlled Spymaster to interrupt Dumbledore in mid-sentence.

Hermione had been worried, he had seen that in how she held herself and from the reluctant way she followed Severus out of the room, but there had been something strangely abrupt in Severus' request, something Harry couldn't place.

He fervently hoped they weren't in trouble, but something crossing the plans of his best friend and her partner usually meant they were.

Whatever they were doing in there, however, it took them an inordinate amount of time. Meeting Draco's eyes across the table, Harry mouthed a question and received an irritated shrug in answer. So Draco had no idea what had caused this, either.

Whispers had sprung up around the room and the less controlled members of the Order had left their places and started to drift inconspicuously towards the Spymaster's office when his door suddenly opened again.

Out strode Severus with his usual long, determined steps, Hermione only following a step behind him.

"Severus?" Dumbledore asked as both settled themselves in their chairs silently, clearly expecting an explanation of what had passed.

"Nothing, Albus," Severus answered coolly. "Just an unexpected development that required our immediate attention." _Spy business_, his dark eyes seemed to tell them all, _Keep your noses out of it_.

Harry frowned, his eyes darting from Hermione to their Spymaster. Something was not entirely right. Severus' voice and behaviour was just as always, but at the same time it seemed as if something was off, as if some strange little thing was missing.

He met Hermione's eyes and she nodded, confirming her partner's message. Still there was a strange expression in her face, something lingering in the corners of her mouth…

But Dumbledore resumed talking and Harry shrugged the feeling off. He would speak with them later and hopefully find out what all this had been about.

"As I have been saying," Their leader continued, sending a little smile towards the other end of the table to show that he didn't mind the interruption. "Miss Granger will confirm the details of the plan tonight. As she informed me, it will most likely take some time to satisfy Tom's curiosity. We will thus gather here tomorrow morning so that she can inform us about the results. If there aren't any questions, I would… Yes, Mr Malfoy?"

Harry turned his head to see a little frown mar the forehead of his friend. Draco was unhappy with something, although Harry couldn't guess with what. Noticing his attention, Draco's eyes darted towards Hermione, then returned to Harry's face immediately.

It was proof of their intensive training together that Harry understood immediately. If this had been planned for such a long time, why hadn't Hermione told them about it?

"I am just wondering about the risks connected to this," Draco now said, his attention fixed not on Dumbledore but on Hermione and Severus. "Wouldn't informing Voldemort so soon increase the danger Hermione is in?"

At his end of the table, Severus shuddered suddenly, his body moving as if fighting to throw off an invisible weight. As if in answer, Hermione flinched violently, her shoulders suddenly thrusting backwards as if she was fighting against an invisible wind.

Harry's resolve to see them after the meeting hardened. Something was definitely off here, and he would be damned if he didn't find out what.

"If there was a risk," Severus said, his voice losing something of its velvety softness. "I surely wouldn't agree to let Hermione do this."

"There is always a certain danger involved when dealing with the Dark Lord, Draco," Hermione cut in smoothly. "If anything this plan gives me greater safety, however. Voldemort wouldn't risk his hold over Harry by hurting me."

Draco nodded, leaning back in his chair, although he didn't seem entirely convinced. But no one else in the Order stepped forward to question the plan, and Harry, although he could see Draco's point, most certainly wouldn't make Hermione's and Severus' life more difficult by questioning them in public.

So they all nodded their agreement and Dumbledore once more congratulated Hermione on her exceptional work, leading the way to a round of applause and praise that left Hermione pale and slightly shaking and Severus gazing at something with black, expressionless eyes that only he could see.

From the way the Inner Circle mingled around Hermione, friendly wishes of luck, hugs and handshakes all around her, it seemed that the Order had finally accepted their Master Spy, and Harry just knew that Severus would spend the next few days gloating that his plan had worked.

"Hermione," Harry said when most of the Order had finally left Headquarters or at least turned their attention away from Hermione and Severus. "Is everything alright with you? You seemed…" He darted a glance at Severus, who stood by her side, his face without expression. "Strange today."

"I'm fine, Harry," Hermione said, an open and warm smile on her face that made Harry's doubts vanish. "But we have an emergency situation with one of the spies… the Northern Gods, you know… and Severus won't relax until we have cleared that up completely."

"Oh, alright," He agreed, a bit surprised. Considering the last time something had gone wrong with Severus' spies, he wouldn't have expected their Spymaster this calm. But perhaps that was what their little venture into his office had been about? Perhaps he had needed to let off steam and hadn't wanted to do it in front of them?

"Hermione, Draco and I wanted to talk to you before you leave tonight…"

"I'm afraid that won't be possible," She said, obviously regretting it as much as Harry did. "Severus will need my help. But we will talk tomorrow, yes?"

Something inside Harry tensed at this, telling him that it was important to speak to her now, this evening, but what right did he have to demand a talk when important things were going on?

"Of course," He said. "I'll be here in the morning."

Draco, who had joined them as they talked, seemed ready to disagree, but Severus sent him a stern glare.

"Hermione will have to prepare herself before she leaves," He stated, and Draco backed down visibly.

"See you tomorrow then," Harry said and Hermione nodded.

"Yes," She said, and before Harry could react, he had his arms full of warm, curly-haired woman, clinging to him for a moment, then letting go just as quickly to give Draco the same treatment.

"I love you," She said, her voice conveying great earnestness. "Take care of yourselves."

"You too," Harry answered, slightly confused, and watched her and Severus vanish through the tapestry.

"Do you have any idea what that was all about?" He then asked Draco, who shrugged but nevertheless looked unhinged in an altogether un-Malfoyish way.

"No idea. But there was something strange about the way they acted tonight. Perhaps they are more worried than they are letting on?"

For a long moment, Harry stared at the tapestry through which his best friend had left, trying to organize the chaos of vague fears in his head. Finally, he sighed and turned away, towards the tapestry that would transport him down to the deserted classroom near the library.

"Whatever it is," He told Draco. "We don't have to worry as long as Severus knows. He wouldn't let her do something stupid, would he?"

"No," Draco agreed quietly. "He would protect her with his life."

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"They agreed, my Lord."

Never, in all the times of coming here, of grovelling in front of him, had it been so difficult to deceive the monster whose Mark she wore.

Never had it hurt so much to project confidence and admiration to the forefront of her mind, while deep inside her defences she howled with pain and despair.

Even if she survived this, Severus would never forgive her.

She had put all she had into that single Curse, all her power, all her will, and still he had fought her every step of the way. Once he had nearly freed himself and she had poured her last strength down into the forced connection the Imperius had established between them.

It was only the fact that he wouldn't hurt her, not even after what she had done, that had made her win. When the Unforgivables were concerned, love was indeed a weakness.

"Excellent, pet," The Dark Lord hissed, real pleasure and the excitement of the hunt in his voice.

She didn't care. It was so hard to make the appropriate noises of delight, so hard to fix her face and body into the patterns he expected.

She had betrayed him. Had broken their partnership, their love, everything that had been between them.

She remembered how she travelled with him through the tapestry, after she had lied and tricked her way through the Order meeting, how she had fixed all her will on the Curse and had prayed that Jane wouldn't be there tonight, for although Draco and Harry might be fooled, Jane never would be.

But Jane had been away, their chambers empty.

The last thing that could stop her removed.

And she had brought him to bed, his body willingly following her commands, his face strangely eager to please, had removed his shoes and ordered him to lie down, had forced him to drink a sleeping potion that would last till morning, had spread the blanket over his body, still and silent in sleep.

Her face pressed against the dark stone of Voldemort's throne room, Hermione sobbed, her eyes pressed tightly shut to prevent her tears from falling, her jaws clenched together to keep the scream inside, the scream of pain and horror that wanted out.

She had kissed him as he lay there, his eyes closed in a face softened in sleep, that wonderful, intelligent, warm face, his lips slightly parted, and she would never hear his voice again, would never again hear him call her name or laugh that incredibly rich, confident laughter.

She would never again feel his arms around her.

She had shivered with sudden cold as she walked down to the edge of Hogwarts' wards, but she hadn't bothered casting a warming spell.

What warmth could there be left for her?

Severus…

So short her life had been, and yet so full of wonder and beauty – the best friends a woman could ever hope for, a magical world opening up to her with all its delightful knowledge, and a love few ever found in this place of darkness.

And she had given it all away.

For this.

And still, as she lay on the floor shivering and sobbing, still her traitorous mind, that cruel intellect that wouldn't stop thinking, just _wouldn't stop_, no matter that the world was crumbling to dust around her, that damned brain of hers made sure that she looked delighted, and happy, and eager to serve _him_.

"I live to do your bidding, my Lord!"

She had left him a letter. She hadn't asked him not to hate her, or to forgive what she had done. She didn't have the right.

"Tonight, you have fulfilled your task, pet. You have brought me Potter, just as you have promised you would."

And yet in all this misery, this desert of ash and burnt corpses she herself had turned her world into, she couldn't bring herself to regret.

This had been her decision. This was what her path had led her to.

And even back then, more than a year ago, when she had made this decision, back then when Draco had been an insecure arrogant boy searching for himself, when Harry had been a child too afraid to embrace his destiny, when Severus had never thought about her twice and spent his days in gloomy isolation, even then she had known that there would be no way back once she had stepped on that path.

She had known where it would lead her. She had accepted it.

To her death.

"But since you have done what you were meant to do, _Hermione_, I find that your use for me has – unfortunately – ended."

She looked up into his face, his cold, snakelike, cruelly amused face, and although her mind did all the right things with her eyes and mouth and hands to convince him of her shock and surprise, she didn't care.

He believed her. Their plan would succeed. Harry, driven not only by his will but by the wish to avenge her death, would defeat him. Draco would stand by his side and finally step out of his father's shadow.

No child would ever again grow up in the knowledge that his parents had been killed by Voldemort, that the scar on his head sentenced him to death. No muggleborns would turn their back on this world of magic because the Dark Mark ghosted through their dreams.

In the end, wasn't that all what really mattered?

And Severus…

Severus would live, at last.

There wasn't more she could ask for.

Is it like this 

_In death's other kingdom_

_Waking alone_

_At the hour when we are_

_Trembling with tenderness_

_Lips that would kiss_

_Form prayers to broken stones._

"I don't understand, my Lord," She whispered, not because she believed her act could save her, but because she _had_ to be desperate, beg for her life and his mercy, or he would begin to doubt.

We are the hollow men. 

_This is the dead land._

"You see, my sweet little mudblood," Voldemort whispered, leaning forward in his throne, and she fixed her eyes on his face, drank in his appearance, all this arrogance, this malice that wouldn't believe in an end and yet end so soon.

"It has come to my attention that you have angered many a servant of my will, that the purebloods of my council are altogether unpleased with your position among them. And of course they are right. Sweet and bright and delicious as you are, pet, you are scum, and you will never be more than a dirty, inferior, ugly mudblood."

"But, my Lord…"

Deepest fear and pain in her voice and eyes. She only had to remember Severus' face to achieve it, his outstretched hand that tried to defend him against her betrayal, the utter disbelief in his eyes before the curse settled on him and turned them into empty holes.

The eyes are not here… 

_There are no eyes here… _

"Lucius."

"Yes, my Lord."

Her head swivelled around to meet his cold, dark gaze, and suddenly, for the first time since Severus had confronted her again, she was afraid again.

There was so much satisfaction in Lucius' eyes, so much greed…

Perhaps the Dark Lord wouldn't kill her after all.

Perhaps he planned to do something worse.

"Take your mudblood to your chambers. Remember, you can do with her what you want, but I need her to write the letters first. No blood on the paper. You will have all the time in the world with her."

"I thank you, my Lord. _Imperio_."

Between the idea 

_And the reality_

_Between the motion_

_And the act_

_Falls the shadow._

And as the curse settled on her body and mind, weighing down her limbs and slurring her thoughts, that distant part inside her howled with hysteric laughter.

If there was nothing else left for her in this world, at least there had been some kind of justice.

_This is the dead land._

_I love you, Severus. Please, please forget me. _

0o0o0o0o

He awoke to an aching head that felt as if it was stuffed with cotton. Thoughts came slowly. He could remember standing in his office, arguing with Hermione about something, Her face, somehow sad and full of love at the same time, and then…

Nothing.

He moved his head, grunting at the pain that followed. Why was he lying on his bed now, fully clothed but for shoes and outer robes? How had he gotten here? And what did that empty bottle do on his nightstand? He always removed used potions bottles immediately, he had done so for years.

He sat up slowly and reached for the bottle. One sniff and he knew what had happened. One sniff and memories assaulted him.

Hermione, casting the Imperius on him. Hermione, leading him back to the Order meeting, where he had agreed to everything and anything she said, only half aware of his surroundings. Hermione, guiding him back to his chambers, kissing him, and ordering him to drink this potion. The strongest sleeping potion he had ever made.

They had made it together.

Pain forgotten, Severus sprang from the bed and stumbled, connecting hard with the bedpost, but ignoring his aching side. He rushed down the stairs, more than once nearly falling, and down to the library.

She was gone.

Of course she was gone, she had probably left the moment she had knocked him out.

A sobbing breath escaped him, and he slumped against the winding staircase.

She was gone.

He didn't know how long he was cowering there, and he didn't know that tears were streaming down his face.

Finally, he straightened with the weary movements of an old man, and, seeking support from every chair and sofa he passed, walked over to the chair where she used to deposit notes for him, before they had started to use the ring.

He saw the parchment when he was still several feet away.

He didn't want to read it.

He knew what it contained.

He had known the moment he had remembered.

But still, unsure, trembling hands took the parchment, and red rimmed eyes scanned the content, once, twice.

Then, the parchment crumpling in a closing fist, he sank to the floor and closed his eyes in utter defeat.

0o0

_My love, _

_I do not ask forgiveness for what I did to you. _

_I do not deserve it. But I knew you wouldn´t let me do what was necessary. You wouldn´t allow me to finish the task that is more important to me than life and death._

_I don't expect them to let me go. If you haven't heard from me by the time you read this, you know what has happened. Don't wait for me. Don't drive yourself mad by thinking of me._

_And don't risk our plan by trying to find me. You have told me once that your life belonged to me. I am claiming it now. Live it. Do not try to rescue me. Just remember me and our few moments of peace._

_I will love you beyond death. _

_Hermione_

0o0

Snape tore into the room like a hurricane, his black robes billowing, his face as pale as marble.

"Is she here?" He shouted hoarsely, and the Order jumped in surprise. "Where is Hermione?"

"Why, Severus, we don't know," Dumbledore answered, surprise and worry in his voice. "We are expecting her return every moment! Is something wrong, Severus?"

It seemed as if their Spymaster wasn't even noticing the worried glances he drew.

"Have you checked for owls, probably one sent to Potter or Weasley?" He asked. "Is her emergency portkey still active?" His voice was precise and frighteningly controlled, but Harry could sense something behind his words, a raging abyss of chaos, fear and pain.

"Why should we, dear boy," the Headmaster answered, honestly confused by now. "Did she send you a message or communicate danger somehow…"

Snape closed his eyes, breathing deeply. To Harry, he looked like Remus on the full moon, desperately reigning his temper in to prevent a catastrophe from happening, but at the same time knowing that it was all decided already, that his every effort would be in vain.

"Of course I didn't get a message from her," He whispered brokenly, still standing in the centre of the room like a lost and frightened child. "She is probably dead by now."

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The title of this chapter refers to Shakespeare's Sonnet 116, and the quotes in the 'Death Eater'-part of the chapter are from T.S. Eliot's poem "The Hollow Men".

The next chapter will be up in a week, I hope. Please review!


	65. Making the Gestures of Life II

A/N: Here's the next chapter, but I'm afraid it does not hold the answers you were hoping for - yet. If you want some reassurance about the outcome of this story, please check my profile. There's a link to a lifejournal post that tells you whether Hermione will live or not.

Thank you for all your reviews and comments over the last week! I'm so happy to know that you care about this story! I'm afraid the next chapter will take a bit longer (two weeks at least), but perhaps you can motivate me to write faster?

0o0o0

**Making the Gestures of Life II**

Later that day, when the first chaos had subsided a bit, Harry couldn't tell what had shocked him more – the story their Spymaster had told them with an unsteady, breaking voice, or the way his face looked, childish in its terror and ancient at the same time, with all hope gone from him.

It was ironic really that it would fall to him to explain, that this man, who had fought so hard against her decision that she had suppressed his will with the help of an Unforgivable, had to point out her reasoning to the rest of them, to the sorry rest of the Inner Circle in front of whose eyes it had all happened. And who hadn't noticed a thing.

Or at least not enough to care and confront her when there had still been time.

It was waiting at first, torn between hope and the utter conviction of their Spymaster, for no message came, and no Hermione. The rising sun and heat found the seventh years huddled together on a sofa, even Draco once foregoing his immaculate appearance in public, too anxious to even notice how he clung to the pillow he held on his lap.

Around midday, Harry was sure he would go mad if he didn't do _something_. But even the thought of leaving this room, of walking the corridors of Hogwarts, where normal people would meet him, people who didn't know what had happened to the world since last night, chilled him to the bone.

_Please let her be alright, please let her return_, He prayed to any god who would hear, not sure if he did it right, but not caring either.

Every other minute, his eyes would dart towards Severus, who was standing at one of the large windows and staring out towards the sky without moving, seemingly without blinking, for hour after hour after hour. His face was dead, like a log of wood or a stone, no expression left on it at all. But Harry knew him well enough to be sure what hurricane of emotions was filling him right now.

Harry hadn't believed him, at first, when he had explained what this mission meant for Hermione.

"But that's madness!" He had shouted. "Voldemort would risk everything if he killed her now! If one of us visited her parents, even wrote a letter to them, everything would fail!"

"I know the Dark Lord," Snape had answered tiredly. "That is a risk he will be willing to take. Better to have her plan spoiled than lose the support of his followers."

"But it's _her_ plan," He protested helplessly. "Would…would he hurt her when she had just offered him what he has always wanted? Wouldn't he spare her for that?"

"Voldemort doesn't care about loyalties, or achievements," Severus had hissed. "All he cares about is power. And even if she gives him the Boy Who Lived, even if she gives him Dumbledore, he cannot risk his power base to crumble because of her. No. If he has decided keeping her isn't worth the effort, nothing can rescue her."

But despite these terribly logical points Harry had wanted to argue, had wanted to deny the awful truth waiting along with his acceptance. It had been the look in Severus' face that stopped him and had caused him to hush his friends in their questions and demands.

Once, in this same room, although it seemed a lifetime away now, he had called her his soul, the love of his life. And his soul had betrayed him. She had had her reasons for it, of course, but still she had imperioed him, had forced him to agree to this. She had drugged him and he had been unable to protect her as he had sworn.

The fire in his eyes had gone out.

Harry hadn't been able to bear it. He had turned away and took a place of vigil at another window of the tower.

It had been he who had seen the owl soar towards them, he who had ripped open the window and received the letter tied to the animal's leg.

His hands were shaking so badly that he tore at the envelope helplessly for a moment, but finally the flap gave way and he pulled out a single sheet of parchment.

"It's from Hermione," He whispered, and as if the Order had taken a collective deep breath, everything went silent.

"_Dear Harry and Ron_," He read aloud, noticing how badly his voice trembled, but not caring, torn between the need to know, to know _now,_ and the wish to postpone the knowledge. "_So here I am at my parents' house, and I was treated to several grand meals already. I can't tell you how proud they are with me – I had to deliver my speech in front of them, and dad has already framed my certificate. It's hanging above the fireplace right now, and I honestly have no idea how to retrieve it from there any time soon."_

Harry heard a soft, muffled sob somewhere to his left, and wished nothing more but to join Mrs Weasley. This letter was pure Hermione, witty and funny in a dry sort of way. He had received letters like this one for seven years now, and it was impossible to think that this one had been written under the cold stare of Voldemort and his Death Eaters. For a moment, he wished to believe that she really was home, that this was a real letter and no reason to worry.

"_Anyway, the reason why I write to you is to tell you that I won't be able to attend the Leaving Feast. Now that they have me, my mother told me, they won't let me leave again so soon. Although I will miss you all and I really wanted to say good bye, I can understand them. They've been alone here for so long! And since I'm going to go to college this autumn, this is their only chance to have me for longer than a week. So don't be angry with me for staying away. I'm sure we'll have many chances to meet the others again and say goodbye to Hogwarts in the future."_

Harry could see that her pen had shaken when she had written these words, trembled like he did now. _She knew that was a lie,_ He thought, looking at the round, careful loops of her _g_s and _t_s, at the precise circles she had drawn over each _i_. _She knew she would die soon when she wrote this. And still she did, for the plan._

"_Please say goodbye to everyone from me. Send our crowd my love and tell them that I enjoyed our time together more than anything else in my life. And remember: Our plan for Halloween still stands! Don't forget it – I'll wait there for you and Ron! _

"_With love, Hermione._

"_P.S. And don't forget to study over the summer, you two. If you really want to become aurors, you shouldn't go slack on your work!"_

His voice broke on the last word, and his hand opened without his own accord.

Slowly, the parchment sailed to the floor, under the sort of silence only a room full of horrified people could produce.

Before anyone had overcome the state of shock the letter had plunged them into, there was a second tapping at the window, a second owl demanding entrance. This one made directly for Professor McGonagall when Mr Weasley opened the window with shaking hands.

"_Dear Professor McGonagall_," Their Head of House read, sounding older than Harry had ever heard. "_I am writing to inform you that my parents wish me to stay with them over the next weeks. Perhaps we will use the chance for a longer holiday together. I know that I was originally planning to return for the Leaving Feast, but hope that these changed arrangements won't inconvenience you. It would be very kind if you had my trunk sent to my parents' house. If there are any developments you wish to inform me about, please send letters to the same address. A neighbour of ours will collect and forward them to our holiday address. _

_All the best wishes and with heart felt thanks for all your support over the years, _

_Hermione Granger._"

"Does that mean that…" Ron finally whispered.

"Yes," McGonagall answered, looking ashen and mournful. "It means that our fear has come true. The Dark Lord will not let her return."

So that was what it felt like when a friend died.

Losing Sirius had been a picnic in comparison.

Slowly, every single one of his years showing, Dumbledore rose from his chair, approaching Severus with unsteady steps.

"My dear boy," He whispered, hand outstretched to give whatever comfort he imagined possible in this moment.

One look from Severus stopped him, froze him in his tracks and killed the wish of approaching him in whoever else had entertained that thought.

It wasn't even a glare. In fact, it was the most unthreatening expression Harry had ever seen on his Spymaster's face. It simply looked as if Severus wasn't there anymore, his spirit, his will, his power. All vanished. Gone along with his love.

For a moment he stood very still, enduring their eyes on his face and staring into nothing, then he turned away, as if shutting them out of his personal hell.

"But… it doesn't mean that she's dead yet," Ron continued, tracing thoughts and consequences in his very own, very slow way.

"It is unlikely that she survived the night," McGonagall whispered, suddenly turning away from both Ron and Severus and hastening over to one of the windows with less than graceful steps. She stopped facing the walls, her hands dry-washing themselves in a gesture totally unconscious.

Draco, to Harry's left, closed his eyes, a muscle in his jaw twitching wildly.

"But she could have," Ron said, his voice rising in stubborn belief. "If anybody could, it's Hermione. She could be still alive. There's no proof in these letters that they've killed her yet."

It was strange, especially considering that grief usually robbed him of every ability to think, but in this office full of people afraid to move, afraid to speak a word, on this morning of his darkest fear come true, Harry found inside himself a clarity he had never before possessed.

He saw everything. Every sound, every smell seemed more intense to him, as if his dying friend's senses and reason had visited him to offer a last chance of understanding.

He saw Molly Weasley, twisting her handkerchief into a tight rope, then releasing it. Twist, release. Twist, release, in a rhythm that seemed to imitate some unknown, far away heartbeat.

He saw Tonks, small like a child in her chair, her hair of a mousy brown, her hands stretched out in front of her as if she could never hope to move them again.

Fred and George Weasley, faces white and slack, the light in their eyes, that constantly moving force of wit and optimism, dimmed to less than a flicker.

Draco, his pressed, shallow breaths testimony of the violent determination not to panic, not in front of the order, his posture rigidly straight, as if his father was standing behind him with his riding crop, ready to deliver a whipping if even a hair moved on Draco's body.

Ron, the only one in this room able to kindle a remnant of hope in his heart, the only one of them Gryffindor and young enough to believe in the face of the truth.

"It _is _possible that she's still alive!" He repeated, his voice growing in conviction and fear.

He saw everything.

Even the way Dumbledore's eyes closed for the beat of a heart, closed and opened, seeing the future and the past and everything that had been his fault in this war, every life he had sacrificed, everything he had done wrong.

"Yes," Dumbledore said, not because he wanted to say it, but because there was room for nothing but the truth on this of all mornings.

"But then we must get her out of there!" Ron shouted. "Do you have any idea what they are doing to her right now? Perhaps she's still alive, perhaps they are torturing her! We _must_ try to free her!"

Harry's shoulders sagged, and he sank down onto the sofa. Ron's words hit him with the force of a violent punch and the world around him swayed.

Two thoughts were fighting inside him, and while the impulse to agree with Ron, to take the easy, righteous Gryffindor way was overwhelmingly strong, his whispering, plotting and planning Slytherin side that wouldn't give way to feelings even now, the side that had just now seen and understood, was telling him how impossible that was.

They couldn't rescue her. Not if they wanted their plan to succeed.

He looked up to the Order members, deep in various states of shock, and saw fervent agreement on the Weasleys' faces, saw the determination to commit some harebrained rescue mission harden on Remus' and Tonks' face.

Even Draco, so pale that his hair shone dark against his skin, looked willing to agree. And those other Order members, those who had to know how mad this plan was, Moody and McGonagall and even Dumbledore, kept silent.

_Who is to tell them_, Harry thought, wanting to wail and scream alongside with the pain that clawed at him. _Who is to say that we will have to let her die?_

"No. We can't rescue her."

The voice was brittle, old and frail, and Harry closed his eyes against its pain.

_And so you are forced to do their dirty work, again_, He thought. _You, who have lost everything tonight._

But then he fought his cowardice, opened his eyes again and met those of Severus, who had turned back towards them, presenting them a face made of stone and a judgment that meant death for his love.

Slowly, wearily, Harry nodded. It was the only way. From the corner of his eyes, he saw Remus' and Mrs Weasley's eyes widen in disbelief, saw Dumbledore and Moody wearily mirror his nod and saw realization settle over the Order.

They would not do the easy thing. They would do what was right, even if their hearts would shrivel and dry inside their chests.

"But…" Ron whispered, unable to comprehend the decision that had been made before his eyes. "That means killing her! You can't leave her to them! They will… will… rape and torture and rape and torture her until she's dead!"

His eyes were pleading as he looked at Severus.

"Yes," Severus answered slowly, prolonging the sound until it turned into a snake's hiss.

"But you can't…" Ron broke off, searching in the faces around him for some sign of mercy or indecision. "You love her!" He finally said, hopelessly. "How can you do that to the girl you love?"

Slowly, every move an effort too large to make, Severus closed his eyes. He swayed slightly, and Harry could see that his right hand was twitching, as if searching for something – someone – at his side while knowing full well that she was gone, that she would never return.

For the beat of a heart, Harry saw his façade breaking down, destroyed like a broken sheet of ice, with all the needle sharp pieces turned inwards, piercing his soul.

Then, he opened his eyes again, and Harry saw… nothing.

"I will do what must be done," Severus whispered. "I will honour her wishes."

And, turning around, he walked to his office as if wading through water and fire.

The door closed behind him.

Harry breathed again.

For a long moment there was silence in the room as the Order members tried to come to terms with what had happened right now.

Then, breaking the spell had had encompassed the whole room, Molly Weasley sank down on her chair and rested her face in her trembling hands.

"How can he…" She whispered, a wail that had lost all strength, all motherly discipline, leaving nothing but a lost, frightened soul behind.

Harry closed his eyes again, and, unconsciously copying Severus' gesture of irritation, pinched the bridge of his nose.

"Because someone had to," He answered coldly. "And we were too cowardly to decide."

"But…" Bill whispered, voicing the thought Harry found in his brothers' and parents eyes. "But she will die!"

"Yes," Moody agreed. "And let's hope for her sake that she does so quickly."

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Only when Ron, Harry and Draco finally left Headquarters together, for once not caring who walked besides whom because the news of this day had destroyed every trace of rivalry between the Gryffindor and the Slytherin, only when they entered a Hogwarts that was full of excited murmurs and decorations, did they realize that it was the day of the Leaving Feast.

"No," Harry whispered brokenly, unable to imagine how he would survive a night among chattering, exuberantly happy Gryffindors.

"You can't stay away," Draco said roughly and hastily. The corridor they stood in was deserted, but no one could be sure for how long. "Your table will be watched tonight. You _must _act as if nothing happened, or what she did will be in vain."

"I know…" Harry whispered, not wanting to voice his fears, seeing in Draco's eyes that he didn't have to.

"Stick to the story she herself spun," Draco said urgently. "Stick to the letter as if it were real. And think well about whom you inform. The rest of the Order will find out of course, but tonight…"

"We can't tell the others tonight," Harry said quickly. "They won't be able to control themselves. Not Neville and Ginny." He met Ron's eyes, wide and empty like those of one who had seen too much. He didn't have to ask to know that Hermione's memories were replaying behind those eyes right now, again and again, and for a moment he was profoundly happy that he had never experienced what Ron had, that the dark images haunting him were nothing more than pictures of a beaten, bloodied Hermione twitching in Severus' arms.

It was bad enough.

"Ron will need a calming potion," He said, surprised at his ability to still think so clearly. "And something to lighten his mood."

Draco nodded. "I have some in my private store. Meet me in front of the Charms classroom." And he hastened away.

The next hour passed in a daze, and for the first time Harry truly understood what Hermione had once told him – that a well educated mind could run on autopilot most of the time.

Dragging Ron, who was still staring about him dazedly as if the world had suddenly changed colour and pace, after him, Harry made towards the Charms classroom slowly, using all his knowledge about Hogwarts to avoid the often used corridors.

If someone met them and saw Ron like this – _or me_, He admitted silently – all might be lost.

But for once on this godforsaken day they were lucky, and when they reached the door of the classroom, Draco was already waiting for them, his face fixed into the sneering mask of the Slytherin prince.

"Drink these," He ordered, his voice cold and precise and with a terrible bleakness hiding behind the words.

To Harry's surprise, Ron took the potions without comment and downed them quickly, probably not even noticing who had given them to him. Or perhaps it was simply that there was no place for enmity on a night like this.

It was Harry Draco fixed his eyes on now. "You look awful," He commented. "Here, let me help." Harry felt the coolness of a few charms wash over his face, and knew that the signs of his distress had vanished from his face.

"Use your Occlumency tonight, Harry," Draco whispered. "Use whatever I taught you over the last months, but you _mustn't _slip. Will you manage?"

Harry lifted his head to nod, then found that he couldn't finish the motion. It felt as if his body was dead, and in one, surging moment of despair, he met Draco's eyes and saw the same feeling mirrored in them.

With one step, he had reached the Slytherin and pulled him into an embrace, clinging to him and letting him cling for one eternal, suspended moment of grief.

Then, strangely consoled and embarrassed at the same time, they stepped away from each other.

"I will manage," Harry whispered, grabbed Ron's elbow once more and dragged his friend away.

Somewhere on their way back to Gryffindor tower Ron relaxed, his facial colour returning to normal, and soon he could walk on his own, without Harry keeping his elbow in a stony grip.

"Remember what we learned from Severus?" Harry whispered to him quickly when they reached the Fat Lady. "Take the emotions and stuff them all underground, Ron, hide all of it away for tonight. Forget it."

Ron nodded unsteadily, closed his eyes for a moment, and when he opened them again the last traces of his terror had vanished from his face. Mirroring his gesture, Harry forced every shred of pain, fear and despair downwards, away from his conscious mind, away from the part of himself that controlled his gestures and words.

It was hard, but the thought of Hermione's mind palace helped him. She had done this in front of Voldemort. He could do it in front of his classmates.

They changed into new clothes quietly, grateful that their dorm was void of any other students. Neville had asked them where Hermione was when they had entered the Common Room, but both he and Ginny had accepted Harry's short explanation about her "being called away". They had no reason to doubt him after all.

When they descended the stairs to the Common Room, school uniforms immaculate and shoes polished, they found it empty, and Harry breathed a sigh of relief.

Slowly, as if in a half-trance, they walked down to the Great Hall, in silent agreement choosing the way they had so often taken together with Hermione, tracing the steps of seven years of friendship, of seven years of explorations, plans and hopes that had turned to ash this morning.

Hermione was dead. And how mad had the world become that he seriously considered this the best option, that he hoped for her to be dead, because the alternatives would be…

Pain flared through is mind and he suppressed it ruthlessly, fixing his burning eyes on the stone steps in front of him, glad that Draco had cast a glamour to hide his real face for tonight.

When they entered the Great Hall and headed towards the Gryffindor table, Harry felt Hermione's absence at his side as a physical pain. He had to suppress the wish to reach out to his right, to touch the place where she would normally be. But not any longer. Never again.

His eyes searched and found Draco, sitting at the Slytherin table with a lazy sneer on his face, his robes and hair immaculate as always. He was trading jokes with Parkinson, and only a certain tightness of his jaw, a sharpness in his eyes hinted at something more than an arrogant prick celebrating the last evening of school.

Draco couldn't even talk about her. He couldn't even show that he missed her or that he had noticed her absence.

Somehow, that thought gave Harry strength. If Draco could do this, then so could he. So _would_ he. This was exactly what Hermione had trained him for all those months, what she had preached about time and again.

It made Harry choke inside that she had taught him all that only to help him hide the news of her death.

But here was the House table, here was his place in between Ron and Neville, and the golden plates and utensils were something he could fix his eyes and hands on, something real, something that would banish the images of Hermione's torn and tortured body from his eyes.

Gods, how was he to eat anything tonight?

"Hey Harry," Lavender called over from the left. "Where's Hermione? Why isn't she here?"

With the curious faces of his House turning towards him in unison, Harry found his mind stuttering to a stand still.

_Why isn't she here? Because she's dead, Lavender. Because she's busy being crucioed. Because Lucius Malfoy is raping her right now. She will never come back, Lavender. She will…_

His eyes flickered to the Slytherin table and he saw Draco staring at him, his lips twitching in a trademark sneer but his eyes burning with intensity, _willing_ him to lie, forcing him to go on, reminding him _why _they were doing it.

Harry swallowed.

"She is visiting her parents," He answered lightly, meeting Lavender's eyes and refusing to blink. "Originally, she wanted to come back for the feast, but her parents were so glad they had her back…" He led the sentence trail of and shrugged, as if to say _hey, what do I know about parents?_

Lavender nodded in understanding. "It must be hard for them," She said. "And after all, it's only the general leaving feast."

"Yup," Harry nodded, then took another sip of pumpkin juice and pretended to watch the other students with nostalgia.

There wasn't much conversation needed tonight. All the seventh years seemed a bit melancholic, telling stories of their great time at Hogwarts, but considering Harry's history of one murder attempt per year, no one expected him to join in.

Ron, potions having kicked in fully, was sharing a heated discussion about the chances of becoming professional Quidditch player with Neville, and Ginny was throwing in derogatory comments about the Chudley Cannons.

When Harry dared looking again at the Slytherin table, he saw Draco engaged in a mock argument with Pansy Parkinson, who was simpering at him again.

Somehow, he survived.

Even when Seamus Finnigan switched to telling stories of the Golden Trio, reminding them all in too many words of the troll they had slain together, of the basilisk that had petrified Hermione and of the glorious days of the DA.

He mentioned SPEW, and Hermione'r ridiculous hats, and the badges she had forced them all to wear, bickering and lecturing until they had given in, and Harry felt an aching in his chest, thinking that his heart would burst.

But somehow, he survived.

The Creevey brothers had prepared an album of pictures for the seventh years, and as he received his copy, Harry was forced to leaf through pictures after pictures of him, Ron and Hermione, waving and laughing, studying together or discussing whatever it was that had seemed important at that time.

There was one of Hermione hugging him after the second task of the Triwizard Tournament, and Harry once more felt her arms closing around him, felt his eyes on her, her hair falling over his face and tickling his nose, and thought that it was over, forever, that he would never see her again, would never be treated to another of her bossy lectures or see that mischievous grin spread over her face.

Still, he survived.

And when Dumbledore stood, his face not graver than usual, sharing a short look with Professor McGonagall who was looking her usual energetic self, and wished them all a safe and quiet summer, Harry was nearly sure that life would go on.

Somehow.

But he hadn't considered the night ahead of him, the long, dark night during which he didn't dare leave his bed, because nothing was to be out of the ordinary, nothing was to risk their plan, and as he lay in the blackness, curled into a ball beneath his blanket, silencing charms up around his bed, the thoughts came, and the fear, and the despair.

He wasn't the only seventh year who cried himself to sleep that night.

0o0

Review, please.


	66. Tis All in Pieces

A/N: Thank you for your patience, my dear, wonderful readers! If you want explanations for my overly long absence, or answers to your questions posted in reviews, or update notices, please go to my lifejournal (homepage-link on my author profile).

And for all those who bravely withstood the spoilers - this chapter brings the answer you've been waiting for so long...

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**'Tis All in Pieces**

It was surreal, standing in the Slytherin Common Room and nodding his goodbye to students who would go home to their Death Eater parents and who would, only a few hours from now, listen avidly to the story of Hermione the mudblood, who had thought she could take a place among the purebloods and had failed.

Draco had spent the night hoping and praying that she was dead, that all was over already, that she had managed to fall in a way that broke her neck, or that one of them had been careless and done a little too much, cut a little too deeply.

He had seen how Weasley had suffered from the memories Hermione had given him yesterday, how Harry had cringed under the thoughts of what might happen to her, but neither of them was cursed with a knowledge about Death Eater atrocities as wide spread and comprehensive as his was. Neither of them knew what Lucius had bragged about so many evenings.

And Draco was fervently glad that he had never been there, had never seen it, so that even this knowledge was theoretical in a perverse sort of way.

Only Severus _really _knew.

And that thought made Draco's heart ache even more as he smirked and nodded and waved them off, all those little Death Eaters that would, all too soon, know what had happened. And snicker in their imagined superiority.

When everyone had left and the halls and corridors of the school were echoing strangely with emptiness, Draco gathered his things, shrunk them and slowly made his way to his new quarters.

Luckily, his new Potions Mistress was supervising students on their way out, or she would have treated him to a cup of tea and kind words he didn't really want. As one of the few residents of the castle over this summer, she had been offered a place in the Order's Outer Circle and had willingly accepted it. After a Triggered Obliviate and Fidelius Charm, Kathryn Rosen had been told about her new apprentice's role in the Order and the true function of his work with her.

She had been surprised, to say the least, a fact that had greatly furthered Draco's belief in his own acting talents. He had hastened to assure her that he was serious about his apprenticeship nevertheless, a fact that he had found to be true – to his own surprise.

Sometime between his fifth year and graduation he had decided that serving the Malfoy name and bribing politicians wasn't what he wanted to do with his life. Regardless of their future, he wanted to be independent, to achieve something on his own, not brought to him by courtesy of his name and lineage.

This apprenticeship, he had decided, would be for real. His name and power and the influence of his father didn't count in front of a cauldron, and the only thing that could make him succeed were his own abilities.

Kathryn had appeared honestly pleased with the knowledge that her gifted student wouldn't use potions as pretence. But still it would make things easier that she knew, and didn't expect him to truly work until Halloween.

Halloween…

Draco found that his hands were grasping the edge of a chair so hard that the darkened wood cut into his skin painfully. Quickly, he disengaged his arms and stood very straight, his eyes and mouth doing the appropriate things, but in his mind he was sinking downwards, falling into the breathing patterns his mother had taught him when he was very small.

He felt confidence and calmness settle on his shoulders, and although he knew that this was the coward's way out, that he should be brave enough to bear his feelings like he knew Harry did, he welcomed the feeling of numbness that accompanied this specific exercise.

He had been looking forward to Halloween, so proud that he was doing his part in the fight against Voldemort and all the things his father stood for. He had thought that he could simply switch sides – a bit acting here, a bit Malfoy charm there, and nothing could really go wrong, for when had anything been denied to him?

And now his best friend was dead.

He deepened his breathing until the strange, hiccupping sobs vanished again. He was alone in the Common Room now, the last Slytherin had left for the Hogwarts express, but still he controlled his face and body rigidly when he stepped out of the entrance hole and made his way to the new quarters Kathryn had assigned to him.

While he touched his hand to a blank space of wall and whispered his password, he remembered how Harry had looked last night, his face so lost and deserted by all its usual vivacity and spirit.

Even deep in his own misery, his own pain, that moment had made Draco realize what task had been set for him.

Hermione had been his friend, yes, and his soul howled with the pain of losing her, but she had been even more to Harry. She had been his confidant, his caretaker, his mentor, and in ways Draco with his family background and centuries old mansion, with his house elves and material security couldn't even fathom, she had been his family.

Draco was feeling her absence like a physical wound, but he knew that – thanks to the cruel regime his parents had put him through for years – he _could_ function without her.

Harry however – Draco wasn't so sure about that. Harry would need someone he could lean on.

He stepped into his new quarters, his first independent home, and stood still in the middle of the living room as if in the eye of a hurricane.

He was graduated, and his life had changed completely. But not in the ways he had expected.

Even with the knowledge of danger and fighting ahead, the months until Halloween had been a time of friendship and security in his mind.

He had imagined that the comradeship between him, Hermione and Harry would deepen, that he would have a chance to learn more about the people he had known as teachers for so long.

Sometimes, when he had sat at the Slytherin table, his back very straight and his head tilted in the arrogant posture expected of him, surrounded by students yet utterly alone, he had imagined the weeks and months ahead, with the school emptied of anyone they couldn't trust, with all those gone who thought they knew him but had no clue about his true feelings.

He had imagined that he would eat together with his friends, not divided by house tables or the sea of students, that they would study and fight and laugh together, perhaps even take a walk on school grounds without having to watch out for discerning eyes.

He had even wondered what it would be like to play Quidditch with Harry, now that their age-old rivalry had turned into the competition of friends. Perhaps, he had thought, they would manage to drag Hermione onto a broom and fly together. Perhaps he would invite his two Gryffindors to his chambers and treat them to a grand dinner.

Perhaps… His eyes took in his surroundings. A silent, slightly bitter smile grazed his lips.

He had looked forward immensely to this: his first day in his own chambers. He had imagined himself to order a luxurious dinner from the house elves, to light his own fireplace and spend a quiet evening with unpacking and arranging his possessions, for once not disturbed by loud housemates or exuberant Gryffindors.

But now the loneliness held no appeal to him, no appeal at all, and he found himself fleeing the silence, afraid perhaps what would wait for him there.

Headquarters were deserted when he stepped through the tapestry, Severus' office door closed firmly. For a moment Draco considered knocking, but then the memory of the older man's face, all closed down and shuttered, stopped him.

He couldn't face Severus, for after all, what could he give the older man but more of his own pain, a soft echo to the despair he had to feel.

No. Better to let him deal with it all in private, better to give him time to build a mask that would withstand other people's gazes, that would carry him through the next weeks and months.

Draco couldn't help with that.

Without a word, Draco turned away from the Spymaster's office and stepped through the tapestry that connected with the gym. There was no one here either, and the sheer emptiness of the large room, the way his steps echoed as he walked over to the duelling platform frightened him.

He sat down on its edge, legs dangling half a feet above the floor like they had done when he had been a child, too small to sit properly on the antique chairs of the official dining room, and he laughed, a harsh, bitter sound.

It was all so ridiculous. Here he was, in this room built to enhance their duelling abilities, and he _could_ duel, could do it better than most seventh years, but he wouldn't use his skills. He would stay at Hogwarts, warm and cosy, while people like Harry and Hermione, who had this thrust onto them, who had been educated by muggles, not by the best tutors the wizarding world could offer, were called out to fight.

He was their only Slytherin student, son of Lucius Malfoy, whom everybody had suspected of taking the Dark Mark since their fifth year, whom the Dark Lord had courted, but had he taken the Mark? No, he was saved from it by the ideas of a Gryffindor, was safe to do with his life as he liked. A muggleborn had taken his place, had done what should have been his task, and she had died doing what he had avoided.

And what was his task? What could he offer the Gryffindors and Ravenclaws that had built this Order to protect the world from the darkness his own house had produced?

Pureblood lore? A well made Calming Draught?

_Take care of yourselves_, Hermione had ordered them. It had been her last words to him and Harry.

But how was he to do that? How was he fucking to do that, when Severus had hidden himself inside his office, and Draco just knew that only his duty to the Order would keep his hand from reaching towards the delicate poisons he had assembled in his private stores? How was he to do that when Harry's world had crumbled down around him and even Ron bloody Weasley needed a calming potion to get through his own Leaving Feast?

"How could you leave us like that?" He whispered, and his voice echoed in the vastness of the empty room. "What the fuck do you want me to do now?"

But she wouldn't have given him an answer to this question even if she had been here by his side, would she?

She had told him to choose, back when their friendship had been young, to choose his own masks and roles and with whom he wanted to be honest. She had never demanded, she had just opened doors and shown him what lay behind.

And one or two times, she had asked for his help.

The hiccupping sensation returned to tighten his throat and Draco sprang from the duelling platform, tension and pain turning his steps into an aggressive stalk as he walked to one of the windows.

He should have said no. He should have refused to take her to the ball, or have told Dumbledore about her intentions. He should have shot their friendship to hell and done the right thing instead just accepting her harebrained decisions. Decisions that had led to her death.

What had his help done to her, in the end? What help had he been, against Lucius Malfoy and the Death Eaters?

_But she also asked you to help Harry, to take care of him_, a voice whispered in his mind and he stood utterly still as he remembered that evening.

Harry, that obnoxious Gryffindor that he had only tolerated for Hermione's sake in the beginning. He _had_ taught him, reluctantly at first, until he had, to his own surprise, realized that Harry Potter was a person he could like. That behind the scar and the name and the fancy titles was a boy whose courage and innocence and even humour Draco could appreciate.

It had come as a shock, really. But he had seen the happiness in Hermione's eyes when the three of them were together, and he had felt awe as he watched Harry's trust in him grow.

Harry needed his friends in a way that Draco, natural Slytherin that he was, could only begin to understand. He drew his strength, his confidence from them, and the shock that Weasley's betrayal had caused had shaken his being to the ground.

And now that Hermione had been taken from him he had to feel as if his very foundations had been broken.

Draco let his eyes travel slowly through the room. The next months would have been difficult for Harry under the best of circumstances. With the death of Hermione filling his heart and mind, Draco didn't know how Harry would cope.

Harry needed his friends. And no matter what the Weasleys or that clumsy Longbottom would be up to, Draco would make sure that Harry had a friend wherever he would go, someone to watch his back.

He nodded to himself, falling back into the breathing patterns he had learned from his mother.

Hermione had asked him to help Harry, to teach and to guard him, and for the sake of their friendship, this new trio that had risen from the ashes of the old, Draco would do his best. He would make sure that Harry learned everything he needed to survive Halloween.

Draco's gaze fell on the strategy section, on the chair Hermione had always occupied during training, and he smiled, a soft, tired smile full of memories.

"I'll keep him safe for you," He promised, feeling as if a weight lifted from his shoulders. "I'll take care of him as good as I can."

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"What about Severus," Harry asked, cradling the hot cup of tea in his hands and trying to ignore the untouched food on his plate.

"What about him." Draco, his dry, inflectionless voice showing not anger or irritation but the utter resignation they all felt when their Spymaster was concerned.

"Draco, he hasn't left his office for three days now! No one has seen hide or tail of him," Harry said, his frustration once more rising to the surface.

Draco sighed. "And what do you propose?" He asked. "Drag him out of the room and force him to talk about his lost love?"

"No," Harry said, putting down the cup and rising from his armchair, ready to pace. "But I can't bear the thought of him sitting all alone in that dreary office and thinking about her!"

"Sit down," Draco commanded dryly. "You've been doing nothing but pacing for the last week. At this rate, my new carpet will be worn down before school starts again. Besides, you don't know whether he hasn't left his office. It's not as if you have been guarding it twenty-four hours a day."

"No, but _you _have put a ward on it two days ago," Harry answered, pacing on and on. "And since you haven't rushed off suddenly I assume that this ward hasn't been activated."

Draco shook his head with amusement. "You're beginning to worry me, Potter. Too clever by far for a Gryffindor."

He too set his cup down on the exquisitely crafted table, rose, took Harry by the shoulders and silently manoeuvred him back to his chair, where he pressed him down and put his cup back into his hand.

"There. Now drink your tea and try to relax a bit. If you start training like this, the first stunner will send you down, and that would give an entirely wrong signal to the Order, wouldn't it?"

Despite his own worries and the knowledge of Hermione's death like a numb spot in his mind, Harry smiled. He didn't know how he'd have managed without Draco these past days.

When he had returned to the castle the morning after that terrible, terrible Leaving Feast, still cold with shock and his face hurting from the constant false smile he'd been forced to wear, he'd found Draco in the gym, waiting for him.

He'd barely given Harry a chance to arrive before he'd started to shoot spells at him. Harry had been irritated at first, then angry, not at all in the mood for a duel, but had found to his own surprise that fighting helped against the frozen feeling in his body.

They had duelled until he had shaken with exhaustion, and then Draco had taken his hand and pulled him over to the area marked with red signs. He had opened a box and set a mouse onto the floor.

"Let it out," He had said in that quiet, determined way he only had when he was very serious about something. " Let it out or it will eat at you from the inside."

And Harry _had_ let it out. Killing Curse after Killing Curse had left his mouth, and with the deadly green light parts of his own agony, of his devastation and despair had bled away. By the time the box had been empty he had still felt worse than ever before, but for the first time since Severus had stormed into Headquarters he had realized that he could still go on, despite everything that had happened.

"Better now," Draco had asked, no, stated, as if he could see into Harry's mind, and he had nodded, thankful and confused at the same time.

"How…" He had begun, not sure what he wanted to say, but again Draco had understood and answered before the sentence was finished.

"It always helped me," He had said. "Let's shower."

And again that had been the right thing to do. Standing in the shower, his own, personal shower in his own, personal chambers above Headquarters, Harry had felt as if he could wash all the misery of the last day off his skin, as if the hot water could give him strength for the day to come.

He thought about Hermione and felt a bone deep sadness, but it was muted in comparison to the roaring pain he had experienced yesterday, like a dragon that had gone to sleep inside his chest, still there, still dangerous, but no longer breathing fire into his heart.

He had met Dumbledore in the main room of Headquarters, and older, frailer Dumbledore than he remembered, who had told him that they would meet with everyone under the Obliviate on Sunday afternoon and tell them the truth.

Harry had nodded, then, and before he had realized what had happened, Dumbledore had gripped him in a surprisingly strong embrace and told him how very, very sorry he was for his loss. His voice had sounded strange when he had said it, and when Harry looked up into his wrinkled, gentle face, he had seen tears make their way over his cheeks and vanish in his silvery white beard.

And then Draco had been by his side again, taking his arm in the way Hermione so often had and leading him over to a new tapestry, a tapestry that led to his chambers in the dungeons.

They had eaten together and talked about Hermione, not the Hermione Gryffindor had known but the true, real Hermione, _their_ Hermione.

Draco had told him how she had befriended him at the end of their fifth year, and Harry had told him how she had led Umbridge into the forest and blackmailed Rita Skeeter, and ere long they had laughed and cried at the same time.

Harry had felt ashamed at first when he had noticed the tears on his face, but he had seen his own feelings mirrored in Draco's eyes, and it had felt so _right_ to mourn their fierce, beautiful Hermione this way.

In a way it had seemed to them both as if she was with them in this room, sitting by Harry's side on the couch, sharing their laughter and their tears, and for a few hours, Harry had felt whole again.

When dinner had come and gone and he had felt tiredness creeping upon him, Draco had handed him a vial of Dreamless Sleep, but both had looked lost at the prospect of spending this night on their own, and so Draco had transfigured the couch and a chair into two beds and they had slept in his living room, peacefully, without dreams.

"I… thank you, Draco," Harry said now, sipping his tea and watching his friend. "For yesterday… you know…"

Draco just nodded that he understood and closed his eyes for a moment.

"That's a lesson I learned from you Gryffindors," He then said, smiling a bit. "Friends make everything easier."

"Not everything," Harry said, remembering with dread that Neville still didn't know, nor Luna, and that they would have to tell them very soon.

"That's not your job," Draco reminded him. "And neither is Severus," He added. "Remus, Minerva and Dumbledore have known him for much longer. If they cannot find a way to talk to him, what do you hope to achieve?"

"They didn't know Hermione that well, though," Harry objected, not sure himself what he wanted to do.

"Oh, it's all so fucked up, Draco," He suddenly sighed. "After what happened, what could we do or say that would make a difference to anybody?"

Draco just nodded.

"I know one thing," He then said. "We cane make sure that the plan she died for works out. We will train and fight and plan and come Halloween, you will send the Dark Lord and his followers to hell."

"It won't bring her back, though," Harry whispered, sadness once more descending on him.

"No," Draco agreed, rising from his chair and touching Harry's shoulder for a moment. "But it will make her proud."

Harry nodded, and after a moment of silent companionship they rose from their chairs and walked over to the tapestry. It was time to tell the others.

Headquarters was nearly full when they arrived, and only now, with everyone assembled, did Harry realize how many they had become. They were, indeed, a force to be reckoned with, enough powerful wizards to take on Voldemort's Inner Circle and win.

For a moment he felt proud of the hard work that had brought them here, but then he remembered whose idea all of it had been. It was so unfair that she couldn't see this.

Harry stood near the wall, half hidden by the bookcases when the Headmaster announced what had happened, Draco by his side like a silent shadow.

He watched the Weasley clan, huddled together, seeking comfort from each other as they always did in times of need. Bill was embracing Ginny, Charlie was comforting Mrs Weasley and the twins had taken position to the left and right of Ron, as if they could guard him from his memories.

Neville's face went white with shock when he understood what had happened, then red, then blotchy with tears. He was crying so badly that the normally reserved Professor McGonagall took his arm and led him over to one of the windows, placed a hand on his shoulder and started to talk to him softly.

She too looked frazzled, and Harry had the dim suspicion that she needed the contact to one of her students as badly as Neville needed a hand of support.

Kingsley barely reacted when he took in the news. He just closed his eyes for a moment, went utterly still, and when he opened them again, Harry could see a sort of sad acceptance in his face.

He had probably lost too many colleagues to be shocked by the loss, and instead mourning like Tonks did, who was sitting in one of the armchairs and crying softly, he took Moody and Remus over to the sides and started a wild discussion that centered around hospital surveillance and ways to at least retrieve her body.

Harry knew that this discussion was probably useless, but it seemed to help the three men, to lend them at least an illusion of power over the situation, and so he just watched them plan, watched Bill and Charlie and Mr Weasley drift over to the group and offer advice, watched how the thinking and talking drove a bit of the room's coldness from their bones,

It was Luna, however, who gathered all their thoughts together and put them in words in her usual way.

"Where is Professor Snape?" She asked calmly, and the room went entirely still.

"Severus is feeling not well at the moment," Dumbledore answered after a moment, his voice frail. "He assured me that he wasn't in need of anything and that he would inform us of anything we needed to know."

"Won't… won't he come out?" Mrs Weasley inquired softly. "It isn't good for him, sitting all alone, and I'm sure he hasn't eaten anything since…"

Dumbledore met her eyes, then lowered his head in silent defeat.

"I've tried everything, Molly," He confessed. "He won't… There was nothing that could make him talk to me. Perhaps when he has had more time…"

"I will ask the Wrackspurts to guard him," Luna suddenly announced, her voice clear and calm and confident. "They will protect him. Perhaps if I made him a necklace…"

Already deep in thought, she settled at the table and started pulling feathers and strings and bits of stone from her pockets. Harry watched her and felt envy at her easy solution, at her deep conviction that she could make things better, while Harry knew, deep down, that neither necklaces nor time would change the feelings of their Spymaster.

Never.

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She couldn't see. She wasn't sure whether her eyes had stopped working or whether it was dark around her, but it didn't really matter.

Pain was all that mattered.

Pain and a soft, aching feeling that reminded her of something she had lost, something she couldn't quite remember, the sensation of touch, soft and warm, and of dark eyes that filled her with happiness.

But it didn't really matter.

There were other eyes she remembered, another face, filled with obsession and a strange, fearsome tenderness that made her cry and cower in fright. Grey eyes. White hair. And a name, a name she had screamed and cried and whispered so often, in hate and fear and pleading shame.

Lucius.

She belonged to him now, that was something she remembered through the pain and the horror and the darkness. She belonged to him, and he could do with her what he wanted.

He _had_ done with her what she wanted, and her body and mind had broken and mended over and over again.

She wanted to lose herself in this universe of pain she had entered, wanted desperately to give up the last reins of her consciousness. There was something important, she knew it, something she mustn't forget – a boy with the eyes of her slavemaster, another boy with green eyes and a trapdoor, hidden deep inside her mind…

She concentrated. It was hard, reaching through all the pain and fear and _remembering_, but although the effort made her head hurt and her treacherous body whimper, her mind cleared a bit.

She felt as if she were lost in a deep, dark lake, swimming upwards to reach the surface, to regain something she wasn't even sure existed. But it was so hard! And as she returned to consciousness, now able to move her head and taste the blood in her mouth, she found that she was afraid of the knowledge that was waiting for her.

She was lying on something soft, in the darkness, and although her arms and hands seemed fine she couldn't move her legs. There was a trail of fire running down her thighs, or at least it felt like fire.

And as she felt her body hurting in places that should never have been touched this way, she remembered.

He wouldn't let her die. It would never end.

All she could hope for was this haze of madness, the merciful veil of forgetfulness that could stand between her and reality.

But she _had _to remember. There was a task she had to fulfil, a plan that had not yet come true, someone she had to protect.

Until then, she _had _to survive, and to stay sane for the things to come.

She started to cry, then, her hands fluttering in the darkness like little birds with broken wings. If only she could _see!_

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A/N: The title of this chapter comes from a poem by John Donne:

'Tis all in pieces, all coherence gone;

All just supply, and all relation:

Prince, subject, father, son, are things forgot,

For every man alone thinks he hath got

To be a phoenix, and that there can be

None of that kind, of which he is, but he."

Review!


	67. Of Masks And Friendships

A/N: Back again after a long absence. I have a new computer that hopefully won't eat up my chapters like the old one did. While waiting for it to arrive and biting my nails with frustration, I realized that it's a very bad thing to update so slowly during this phase of the story (a thought which you will all agree to, I believe). That's why I will try to manage weekly updates over the next few months, until the story is finished (there are about ten chapters to go, folks!). Now, don't kill me if they don't come exactly seven days apart, but you _can_

expect me to move forward in a much quicker pace than I have been for the last few months. Three cheers! 

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Of Masks and Friendships

Most of the Order's Inner Circle had begun to attend the daily training sessions, and the duels seemed driven by a new determination. The fighting had become fiercer, the curses darker, and the physical exercises brought even Tonks and Kingsley to their limits.

It reminded Harry of their first sessions with the DA, when the sheer knowledge that they were doing _something_, that they were finally fighting back, had given them an edge Harry had never known before.

Only that this time around the training lacked the optimism they had still felt in their fifth year. Instead they were fighting aggressively, dangerously even, throwing everything they had into it, and when Harry looked around he saw nothing but grim faces and eyes filled with the knowledge of death.

Days came and went in this strange haze of fighting and mourning they had fallen into, and Harry began to hope that they had found a way to function, that - despite everything that had happened - he would manage.

Until, five days after the Leaving Feast, a letter from Draco's father arrived. Ordering Draco to visit Malfoy Manor the next day.

"You can't go," Harry protested when Draco told him about his father's demands. "It's too dangerous!"

He didn't want to admit it, but the thought of losing Draco, and be it only for a week, was more than he could stand. Over the past days, Draco had been his constant support, his shield from other Order members and their unrestrained grief, the only other person under thirty living in this castle (_when we should have been three_, a voice would whisper).

Whyever Draco had changed in the last week, whatever he had done, he was exactly the thing Harry needed to cope, to be able to keep up a brave front, knowing that he could vent his grief with the ex-Slytherin.

And that brave front was needed badly, because now more than ever the Order seemed to look to him when strategy was planned, to him when they questioned their own courage and abilities.

With Severus gone, Minerva's mouth constantly thinned into a grim expression and even Albus Dumbledore's twinkling eyes dimmed by mourning, it was Harry who had to keep them going, and for the first time he fully understood what it meant to be the Boy Who Lived, The Chosen One, the child of the prophecy.

Despite their power and experience, despite the many brilliant minds who had devised this plan, they were looking to him. Their success rested on his shoulders. And after years and years of denial, of fear and despair, Harry now found that the thought didn't frighten him anymore.

This war had killed his parents, his godfather and now his best friend, it had stolen the lives of everyone he knew. That was too much already. Harry wouldn't allow the names of Draco, of Remus or the Weasleys to be added to this list.

He would see the war finished, and if that forced him to become a leader, to encourage men and women twice or thrice his age, then that was what he would do.

In a way he had never expected, would never have wanted, Harry Potter had grown up.

But it had been Draco who had made it possible by teaching him the skills he needed so badly, by never leaving his side these days and giving him subtle hints only Harry would see. It was Draco who guarded his back and made him eat regularly and made him rest when the exhaustion became too great. Draco who made him talk and remember and mourn and who made him fight when the loss threatened to overwhelm him.

So he couldn't go. Not any under circumstances. Because then, Harry would be totally alone, and he knew he wouldn't survive that.

Draco sighed, and for a moment the glamour he constantly wore these days flickered, showing deep rings of exhaustion under his eyes.

"I have no choice," He disagreed quietly. "This is an order, Harry, not a polite request from my mother. If I disobey he will wonder and become suspicious. We cannot afford that. Not to mention that I can feed my father and Voldemort information they will not question, and that there's a chance for me to find out more about their plans for Halloween. This is too good an opportunity to let it pass."

"No," Harry said, his voice hard. "I will not allow it. I will not lose you, too."

A month ago he would never have said it, a week ago he would have blushed to the roots of his hair. Today, it was the easiest thing in the world to say. If Hermione's death had taught them one thing, it was to accept the comfort a friend could give.

"You won't," Draco answered. "They would never hurt me, Harry. I am a Malfoy. There's no reason at all to mistrust me, and you know well enough that I can act the part."

"No," Harry repeated stubbornly.

"Do you think that I _want_ to go?" Draco now asked, the first anger he had displayed since Hermione had left blazing in his eyes. "Even the _thought_ of meeting my father makes me panic. But I would never forgive myself if Hermione sacrificed her life for nothing, if the plan failed because of me! How would you feel if we let this one chance to kill Voldemort pass, only because we were afraid?"

But Harry was not in the mood to listen to reason.

"Let's go to Dumbledore," He offered instead. "He'll think of an alternative, I'm sure."

But Dumbledore couldn't offer an alternative. He received the letter from Lucius Malfoy with a grave expression and failed to offer them any sweets at all, a fact that greatly worried Harry.

"I am afraid that Draco is entirely right, my boy," He finally said after carefully reading the letter twice, applying several unknown charms to it and even raising it to his nose to sniff it gently.

"His father appears very determined to see him, and if Draco refuses to visit his family until Halloween, his loyalties might be questioned. Unfortunately, Draco is too closely involved in the transmission of the prophecy to let that happen. Our whole plan stands and falls with his credibility."

Standing in Dumbledore's office, Draco by his side and the offensive letter spread on the Headmaster's table, Harry was very close to tell them that the plan could go to hell as far as he cared. He was sure that even Hermione wouldn't have wanted Draco to return to his father, but he couldn't think of even one argument that might convince Draco.

"But it's dangerous," He finally said, knowing as soon as he did how lame that sounded, how pathetic.

"So is confronting the Dark Lord, dear boy," Dumbledore answered, his expression softening in the face of Harry's distress. "And yet you have never hesitated to do so for the sake of your friends. Draco has the same right to make this decision as you had when you entered the Department of Mysteries, or when you will fight him at Tintagel."

He sighed, shaking his head in a gesture of resignation. "So young," He whispered, and Harry wasn't sure if he had forgotten they were still standing in front of him. "All of you so young, and yet the weight of the world lies on your shoulders."

The lines on his face deepened for a moment, and Harry wondered whether he remembered all those who had died before them, his mother and father, the Prewett brothers, Cedric Diggory and Sirius, whether he had seen the danger for them coming as he had for Harry and Draco and Hermione.

Then, Dumbledore straightened and became the Headmaster again, the General they all looked up to.

"I will send Severus a message," He said, and a quill on his desk started writing on its own. "I am sure he'll want to brief you before you leave, Draco."

The quill finished, signing the message with a flourish and the parchment rose into the air, tying itself with a red ribbon and floating over to Dumbledore, who touched his wand to it, leaving the stylized image of a phoenix rising from the flames glowing in red lines on the white.

"Alas, I am afraid that my attempts to contact Severus over the past week have irritated him somewhat," Dumbledore explained the sign with a sad smile. "This will ensure that he opens the scroll. He should be here in a few minutes."

He nodded towards Fawkes and with a soft thrill the phoenix grabbed the parchment and vanished in a sudden explosion of fire.

They waited in uneasy silence for Severus to arrive. Normally, Harry would have been relieved that their Spymaster would join them, would have even hoped that perhaps Severus would see sense and forbid Draco to go. But no one had seen head or tail of the man since Hermione vanished, and Harry wasn't sure what state he would be in.

So he carefully prepared for the worst. But when the tapestry connecting Dumbledore's office to their Headquarters glowed golden and a dark figure stepped through, it still took all of Harry's newly acquired self discipline to keep him from showing his shock.

The greasy git was back.

Only now, seeing the nightmare of his school time returned in full, did Harry realize how much Severus had changed over the past months, not only in his perspective, but in the most physical sense.

Gone was the amused, slightly mocking smile from his face, gone was the relaxed attitude. Black robes, covering every inch of his skin from neck to toe instead. A pallor complexion. Hair that hung like an oily curtain between him and the rest of the world. Harry could have sworn that his teeth had slightly yellowed since he had last seen him.

"Show me the letter," Severus ordered the Headmaster, without one look, one word in their direction. As if they didn't exist.

A cold, stark feeling of loss hit Harry, so suddenly that he felt his eyes burn with the shock of it. He hadn't expected this.

He had waited for a broken, hurting man to enter the room, for the Severus he had seen when Hermione had been ambushed by Death Eaters and nearly killed, or perhaps for the one he had seen, only for a short moment, when Draco had handed her the prophecy before Voldemort's summer ball. He had expected the man with the weary, unsure movements and the terribly vulnerable face he had last seen, before Severus had fled to his office to hide his wounds from the world.

He had expected anger, for hadn't Hermione told him once, so long ago, that anger was the emotion Severus used to keep himself going?

But there was no anger here. Only the greasy caricature of a man he had come to like and rely on.

"Severus…" Harry began, not sure how he would continue the sentence, not sure what there was to say, but unable to stand this cold silence any longer.

Severus didn't react. There wasn't even the hint of a scowl on his face, and the total absence of any expression was what frightened Harry most.

Suddenly, he was ashamed of his own selfishness.

"When did this letter arrive," Severus said, no inflection in his voice marking his words as a question. He turned towards Draco, his gaze touching Harry for a heartbeat, but it was as if he didn't really see them, as if, behind those black, emotionless eyes, no one was at home.

"About an hour ago," Draco answered, his voice as expressionless as Severus' except for a tiny flicker that betrayed his deep unease. "I thought I'd leave early tomorrow."

No word, no gesture that showed compassion or even interest. Severus didn't even nod to acknowledge Draco's decision.

"You'll need careful briefing," He said instead, and Harry didn't protest. With everyone else he would have, long and most vocally, but he couldn't now. There weren't words in the presence of this scary man that had once been Severus.

"I'll need half an hour before we begin," Draco answered, his eyes dark and unreadable. "There's something I have to do first."

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Ron was on his way to the kitchens, hoping to gauge a snack from the ever-obliging house elves, when he felt a rough grip on his shoulder and was slammed against the wall of the corridor.

Before he could reach for his wand it was flying from its holder, out of Ron's reach. He was defenceless.

"A word, Weasley," A cold voice whispered into his ears, and the strong hand on his shoulder twisted him around until he met the grey eyes of Draco Malfoy.

"I knew it," Ron yelled, triumph replacing the cold pocket of guilt and dread that usually filled his stomach these days. "I knew you weren't really on our side, Malfoy! Now Harry'll believe me and they'll kick you out of the Order! Just wait, you…"

"I don't have time for your paranoid rubbish, so listen closely, Weasley," Malfoy snarled, and the cold determination in his voice made Ron realize, quite suddenly, that he was alone and wandless in the presence of a Death Eater.

So that was it. The situation he had been afraid of for years. Moody's_constant vigilance_ hadn't helped a bit, in the end.

But he wouldn't tell the bastard a thing, Ron vowed to himself while he stared in the eyes of his school nemesis. He would never betray the Order, whatever the ferret would do to him…

"I'm going to be away for some time. I don't know if I'll return, but whatever may happen, Harry will need you. You will be his only friend left once I'm gone, and I expect you to help him to the best of your abilities. Is that clear?"

Whether he would torture him or… Ron's line of thought came to a crashing, stuttering halt as Malfoy's words sank in. What?

"What?" He asked, glad that he was a Gryffindor. Gryffindors didn't sound stupid, they sounded… forthright. Yes, that was the right term.

An irritated sound from Malfoy. "Really, Weasley, just how small is your brain? I didn't use too complicated words, did I?"

The usual insults, but this time they lacked something. Ron chanced another look at Malfoy, and now he saw an expression on the ferret's face that he knew from Harry, who had looked this exact way every time he had walked into danger without knowing whether he would return.

The expression looked strange on Malfoy's face. After all, he was a coward and would never get into a dangerous situation when he could avoid it.

Then, the other meaning of Malfoy's words became clear to him.

"_You_ are asking me to be a good friend to Harry?" He said incredulously. "_You?_ We have been best mates since first year, and you can't even imagine what we went through together, you poncy ferret! Just because you sidled your way into his trust doesn't give you the way to treat me as if you were…"

"That's exactly what I mean," Malfoy hissed, his eyes turning pale in a way that reminded Ron of Malfoy's father, back in the Department of Mysteries. His rage stepped back a bit to make room for worry.

"Where have you been over the last week, Weasley? Your _friend_has been locked up in this castle, trying to deal with everything at once, and where have you been? Sitting around your kitchen table with your big, happy family? Playing Quidditch in the back yard? Have you even once thought about Hermione, and what her death must mean for Harry?"

"I_have_ thought about her," Ron protested, feeling tired and unhappy and angry at the same time. "Every hour! I loved her, you know! But what can I do? She's dead!"

To his own horror, he found that his eyes were burning, wanting to let out the tears that were hiding there, that he had to work so hard to keep at bay in the presence of others. The ultimate humiliation – crying in front of Malfoy.

"But Harry wouldn't want my help, would he? He knows that she hated me, till the end, and I haven't been good enough for the two of them for a long time! What do you expect me to do? Stand by his side while he treats _you_ like the brother he never had"

Merlin, how it hurt to admit these things! But he was so angry and miserable right now that they had to get out, even if Malfoy was the one hearing them.

"You will not burden him with your infantile jealousy, Weasley," Malfoy hissed, caring not one knut about what Ron was saying. But that was typical, wasn't it? Slytherins only thought of themselves, especially Malfoy!

"You will not demand things from him he can't give you. You will support him, and strengthen him, and for once in the life be the friend you should have been! I would not advise you to make any mistakes."

"Is that a threat?" Ron asked, his anger rising to a whole new level.

"No. But this is one: If you do not grow up and do as I say, I will find you and show you every single thing my father taught me about pain. And believe me, that's more than you ever want to know."

"You are threatening me so that I'll help Harry?" Ron asked back, not believing his own ears.

"Don't even think of hurting him, or you won't need a memory to know what the Cruciatus feels like."

Ron opened his mouth to started yelling again, then took a good look at Malfoy's face, drawn and white and very tense, and closed it again.

"Malfoy, are you going mad?" He asked seriously.

"No," The ferret answered quietly. "I am visiting my father."

And, with a last threatening look in Ron's direction, he placed Ron's wand on the ground and walked away.

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Draco's heart beat wildly as he followed his father down through the living room into what had once been his study.

He had been at the Manor for three days now, and once the first wave of rage and panic had dissipated, the time here had been surprisingly… uneventful.

He had spent most of the time with his mother, who had questioned him for hours about his decision to apprentice. She seemed to believe that working with his hands – and be it for something as expensive and exquisite as potions – was too plebeian for a Malfoy. Obviously, and that surprised and frightened him at the same time, for it showed not only that his mother didn't know him at all, but also how much he had changed over the past year, obviously she had expected him to come home and spent his days in carefree luxury instead of searching and finding a useful occupation.

She also disliked the idea of him staying at Hogwarts immensely, whether it was because she wanted him as far from Dumbledore as possible or because she hoped to have him in closer vicinity he couldn't say.

He wanted to believe that it was because she cared for him, but the way in which she tacitly supported his closer association with the Dark Lord made him doubt that sentiment. She had, after all, seen what serving Voldemort had done to his father.

But despite her unhappiness with his choices, she had gone out of her way to show him how proud she was of his achievements, how much she loved him.

She had shown it in the only way Narcissa Malfoy was capable of.

He had a new wardrobe now. Not to mention the new, luxurious furniture his mother had insisted on buying, arguing that if he _had_ to stay at Hogwarts she at least would make sure that his living style lived up to Malfoy standards.

He had never before noticed the gloating ugliness on her face when she spoke about those standards.

It had been a bittersweet realization to see how much he was a creature of Narcissa on the outside, sharing her taste (which was excellent), her expectations (which were high) and her shopping style (which was expensive), while inside he was nothing like her, was, in fact, unable to bear her attitude at times and had to muster all his mental discipline not to show just how disgusting her beliefs, her world, her arrogance was to him.

"It seems your mother quite spoiled you during your visit, Draco," his father now said, as if he had guessed the direction of his thoughts, and Draco felt his lips stretch into a superior smirk while his breath hitched uncomfortably.

"She seemed… unwilling to let me return to Hogwarts," He drawled in his best imitation of Lucius.

His father. How he hated him! Him and everything he stood for, his never questioned arrogance, the elegance with which he tread on those below him. His cruelty that was so defined, so exquisite that it resembled a thing of beauty. His father, Draco thought as he did his best to imitate him, was like a diamond, cold, hard and unbreakable, and how long had Draco longed to possess the same kind of strength, to be as untouchable and self assured.

"She has been more than reluctant to follow our Master's will since…"

Lucius didn't finish the sentence, and Draco wasn't sure what he had meant to say. Since his father's imprisonment that had cost them the acceptance of society? Since his continued absence from the Manor that had taken her husband away from her? Since Draco's further involvement with his father's causes? Or since Lucius' infatuation with Hermione that had shamed Narcissa on a completely new level?

The last thought reminded Draco once more of his friends, the one he had left behind at Hogwarts, and the one he would never see again. He wasn't sure whether he could trust his voice, so he just nodded and walked on by his father's side.

They stopped in front of the solid oak door to his father's former study, a room Draco had only entered half a dozen times during his childhood. It had been the centre of the Malfoy power before Lucius' fall from grace, with important people coming and going during all times of the day, private secretaries working in the adjoining chambers and the constant commands of his father filling their ears.

Now all that was left from this former power was Lucius' desk, heavy mahogany whose expensive shine was hidden below a thick layer of dust. His mother had forbidden the house elves to clean this room after his father had been sent to Azkaban, as if the slow decay of its glory was her own, personal revenge.

Draco wanted to ask Lucius what they were going to do here, in this room that seemed to belong to the past, but it had never been a good idea to question his father's motives. Lucius didn't like questions.

So he waited, his head high, the palms of his hands pressed slightly against the sides of his legs, while Lucius softly closed the door behind them and walked towards his desk. He stretched out his hand, as if he wanted to touch the dusty wood, but then turned away abruptly.

Draco met his eyes and saw anger there, fanatism and a strange, feverish glimmer that he couldn't quite understand.

"I brought you here tonight, Draco," his father said, "Because there is a lesson you need to learn, now that you have graduated and all but joined the ranks of our master."

Again, Draco felt his heart beat faster, although he wasn't sure whether from worry or from excitement. This was his chance to learn more about Voldemort's plans, to gather information the Order so direly needed. But this wouldn't be the first lesson his father had given him, and all of them had consisted of pain, hate and darkness.

He didn't want to learn more of that.

"What do you wish me to do, father?" he asked, no hint of his thoughts in his voice.

Instead of answering, his father took something from the pocket of his cloak, weighed it in his hands for a moment, then offered it to Draco. It was a stone, an ordinary, dark grey stone, and Draco's worry turned into fear.

"Portus," Lucius said, coolly, and the study vanished in the whirlwinds of magical transportation.

_Concentrate, damn it_, Draco whispered to himself, trying to control the panic that threatened to engulf him. Severus had _told_ him that this might happen, that Lucius might take him to one of his hiding places or even present him to the Dark Lord.

No one suspected him; he knew exactly how to act his part, and if anything at all went wrong, there was still the triggered Obliviate-spell in place to protect him and his knowledge.

Nothing bad could happen. This was his chance to gather information, his chance to give the Order what it needed.

"Where are we, father?" Draco asked, taking in the richly decorated hallway with its tapestries and sculptures.

"One of the Dark Lord's many hidden mansions, Draco," Lucius answered, and there was a fierce, dark pride in his eyes. "You have seen much of the ignorance and perverseness of our society these past years. It is time to show you what our Lord has to offer his faithful servants. Follow me."

Draco was quite sure that he didn't want to see whatever Voldemort gave to his servants. He knew enough of his father's tastes to suspect something cruel and painful and rather disgusting.

"I'd really like to see that, father," He answered, projecting curiosity and greed.

His father smiled darkly.

"And you shall," he said, his hand resting on Draco's shoulder for a moment.

Then he resumed walking, one hand extended for a moment, a silent command for Draco to accompany him.

"And how _are_ things at Hogwarts?" Lucius asked out of nowhere, his manner once more cool and unconcerned. Draco had the impression that his father wasn't really interested in the answers, was interested only in what he was leading them too. But he had never entirely managed to read his father. There was just too much Lucius Malfoy hid under his elegant façade to ever be absolutely sure what he thought or wanted.

"Quite well," Draco answered, his voice just as cool and controlled, "My apprenticeship is progressing nicely, and since I regularly take breakfast in the Greath Hall I've been overhearing comments on 'Order business' more than once. Most of the teachers vanish for hours and hours at a time, though I couldn't find out yet where exactly they meet."

He smirked, making sure that his father could hear arrogance and satisfaction in his words. "Potter has been throwing temper tantrums I could even hear in the dungeons. He is not talking to Dumbledore, and I heard McGonagall mentioning that he refuses to eat with the teachers. He is often seen with the Weasleys…"

Draco paused, just for a tiny moment, and considered what to say next. It was a risk, certainly, but it was also a chance for them to find out, to know for sure…

"He seems to Miss Granger…" He added, making sure that the sentence ended as a question.

"Imagine that," His father answered. And then he smiled.

That smile nearly undid Draco's control. It told him that his father_knew_, that he had seen whatever had happened to Hermione. It was the satisfied smile of a dangerous animal after the feast. In this moment, Draco knew that his father had done something terribly to Hermione.

And that he had greatly enjoyed it.

"I had rather expected her to stay at his side, if only for informational value," Draco said, not caring that he was endangering himself by showing too much interest. He _had_to know what lay behind that smile.

Lucius' eyes seemed to warm with a strange fire, and, in a gesture of unconscious arousal, he licked his lips. His hands fingered his cane in an altogether possessive way.

"Oh, but she had other obligations," He purred.

Draco felt sick. Suddenly, he wanted nothing more than to get away from his father.

Lucius stopped in front of a door at the end of the corridor. The fire in his eyes burned brighter now, more feverish than before.

"See for yourself," He whispered, and opened the door.

And, with a leaden stomach and a mind that burned with the scream of rage he had to suppress, Draco.

The room was nearly completely empty, the walls white washed and the floorboards bare, without the usual carpets, pictures and other accommodations that turned even the most humble Malfoy abode into a place of comfort and luxury. In the middle of it, there stood a large four poster bed, and on it…

Draco felt his throat constrict as under a violent convulsion. The shock hit his stomach and spread swiftly to the outer limbs, until his whole body was simultaneously frozen and burning with heat.

Hermione.

He heard his father by his side chuckle with amusement.

"Oh, how the mighty have fallen," He whispered, his eyes resting on Hermione's body as if she was a thing he owned. "She's mine now. The Dark Lord gave her to me after her use for him had ended. All mine."

Not thinking, not feeling, Draco stumbled towards the bed. He was only dimly aware of his father's presence by his side, even less aware that his masks were still working, if only barely. All he wanted was to assure himself of what his eyes saw.

Hermione, alive. Her skin too white against the dark sheets, lines in her face he had never seen before, her hands and feet bound with magic chains to the posts of the bed… but she was alive!

And to think that they had mourned her, that they had accepted her loss when there was still hope! Draco was alone with his father and her – he hadn't seen another living being in this house. If he was quick, if only he could surprise his father…

She was alive!

And even now that his hand inched towards his wand, even now that he stood by her side, still not quite believing what he saw, something in her face moved.

She opened her eyes.

There was only confusion in them for a moment, fear and pain and things Draco could not name, but then she seemed to recognize him, and for the beat of his heart, her face filled with so much love that it hurt to watch.

Then something in her eyes jumped towards him.

Draco jerked back as he realized what she had done, but his panicked protests echoed only in his mind as he felt walls slide, shadowy figures move to the front and others vanish behind steel doors.

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Something had woken her from the half-sleep that was her normal state these days. She had clung to her sanity, to the last shreds of her consciousness for – was it days? Weeks? Months? – now, knowing that there was something important to come yet, something she still had to do before giving in.

And now, suddenly, she was awake, wide awake, the pain hammering like a giant clockwork in her body, and she knew that whatever she had waited for was here, was now.

That it was nearly over.

Hermione opened her eyes.

Nothing had changed about the room, only that there was more light than she was used to. But then she wasn't alone. He liked to _see_ her.

He was standing at her bedside, the white of his hair a striking contrast to his black robes, but her vision seemed to be blurred, for there was a second shape standing besides him, as white-black as the first one, only a little smaller.

Hermione strained to see his face. Her eyes seemed to have lost most of their strength these days, but perhaps it was the strange twilight in the room that hindered them.

Suddenly, without forewarning, awareness filled her body and mind, and she barely stifled a scream of agony as it set her cells ablaze.

Draco.

Her Draco.

There was such horror in his eyes, despair and a love nearly drowned by sorrow, and suddenly she knew why she had kept swimming against the tide of pain that had tried to drive her out to the ocean, she knew why she had hung on to her mind.

Here was Draco, son of Lucius Malfoy, of _him_, and he was about to betray himself with the shock of her presence. His body was vibrating wildly, his hand creeping towards his wand, and his eyes, his eyes…

But that couldn't be. Draco had to live. It was one of the coordinates she had fixed her life around, and so decisive was this fact that she barely had to think.

She gathered her power around her, a tattered cloak that would soon fall to dust, and with a last leap of strength, an effort so huge that she groaned, she thought _Legilimens_ and entered his mind.

Almost suddenly, she saw his face change. Like a cloud moving over the sun a mask slid over it, removing thoughts and feelings and replacing them with new ones. In the beat of a heart, he changed completely.

She met his eyes, now a cold, quicksilver grey hardened by arrogance and calculation, and what she saw was a copy of _him_, a little princeling without compassion and mercy.

He smiled at her. A greedy, lustful smile that turned her into a thing to be possessed or discarded.

She closed her eyes. There was a new pain in her chest, a pain of the sort she had almost forgotten, not the physical burning on her skin but a slow, crawling ache that made her feel numb and cold.

She did not want to see Draco like this. But at the same time, she felt glad it was done.

Nodding once, satisfied, she stepped back into her mind and closed the door behind her. All sound stopped. All taste and smell and feeling stopped. Dimly she could discern from the way her body twisted and rocked that the torturing had begun again, but it didn't matter to her. Not in here.

She turned away from the door, towards the huge and beautiful landscape of her thoughts, and nodded again. Grimly, this time. Determined. Then, she set to work, her hands turning into large shovels that tore at the earth and grass as she walked towards the maze and the library it hid.

Faces flashed before her, memories to her right and left, of days spent with her loved ones, of all the knowledge she had treasured over the years, of those beloved black eyes, but she turned away from them, her heart a splinter of broken ice.

No time to weep over spilled milk. She had a mind to destroy.

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Review!


	68. Of Masks And Friendships II

**A/N:** See? I told you I would update more regularly and I kept my word (for once…). No massive plot advancements in this one, but you finally get to read Severus' perspective on what happened, and that's worth something, innit? Next chapter should be finished and up in about a week. And look out for a 'Had I Known'-update – it might just happen this weekend…

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**Of Masks and Friendships II**

Draco's back was very straight and his thoughts a satisfied purr as he walked up towards Hogwarts' gates. The last week had been… efficient.

His mother had bored him out of his mind of course, with her pathetic reluctance to let him do what he had been _chosen_ to do, what would guarantee him the good graces of their master. At least she had seen to his more material needs.

But with his father's arrival, the visit had certainly become more interesting.

He wasn't sure what had pleased him more – to see the stupid mudblood moan and writhe under the Cruciatus or to finally kneel before the Dark Lord's throne.

A pity that he couldn't take the Dark Mark, but regular checks of all inhabitants of Hogwarts simply made it too dangerous. The Dark Lord understood that. He had told Draco that he would be a worthy addition to his ranks, once the time had come.

He had told Lucius to be proud of his son.

Draco held his head even higher when he thought of that moment, his own feeling of elation and the answering glitter of pride in his father's eyes. Finally he could earn the Malfoy name the honour it deserved.

He opened the great entrance door of Hogwarts with a flick of his wand and stepped in. He had been keyed to the wards by Kathryn – otherwise he wouldn't have been able to even approach the castle. Security was tight at Hogwarts, especially since it had become the new Headquarter of the Order of the Phoenix.

It would be Draco's task over the next months to find holes in these defences, to find a way to breach the wards and allow the Dark Lord entry when the time finally came for that.

He just couldn't wait to see the faces of those mudbloods, mudblood-lovers and especially of the blood traitor Snape when they found out that _he_, Draco Malfoy, had brought them to their knees and caused the Dark Lord's victory. The thought alone made him smile in lazy triumph.

But all his satisfaction died when he saw who awaited him in front of the Great Hall.

Potter.

Smiling no less.

Merlin, what a pathetic excuse for a welcoming committee.

"Potter," He snarled, his good mood ruined. "And here I thought I'd finally be rid of you."

The Golden Boy had the gall to actually look hurt.

He took a careful look around, as if to make sure that no one would be watching his utter humiliation by the hands of a Malfoy, then stepped forward as if willing to meet Draco halfway. Such stupidity really deserved to die.

"No one's here, Draco," He said.

Draco felt his lips into a smirk. Perhaps there was still a way how his day could get even better.

"How good of you to tell me, Potter," He mocked, "Then I suppose there's no reason to pretend, is there?"

The idiot was stupid enough to nod, as if this wasn't reason enough to turn around and run.

"Let's have some fun, Potter, shall we?"

And Draco raised his wand, a slashing curse ready on his lips.

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The tolling of a bell alerted Harry to the arrival of someone in Hogwarts' entrance hall, and he closed the book he hadn't been able to concentrate on for the last hours with a snapping sound.

Draco had returned.

Relief filled him, and for the first time in days, his steps were light and swift as he walked to one of the magical tapestries and made the transition to an unused class room near the Great Hall.

Finally there would be someone else to break the oppressive silence of the empty school, someone to talk to and to share the madness this place had become.

And to think that Harry had always dreamed of staying here for the summer, that his eyes used to glaze over when he thought of the possibilities a student and – at least partially – teacher-free school would pose for him.

But then Hermione had…

And now he spent his days in the library or in Order Headquarters, getting nothing but glimpses of a harassed Professor McGonagall – "Call me Minerva, dear, you're not a student any longer" -, a Headmaster that suddenly looked all of his many years and a few mournful Professors that darted through the halls and corridors as if too steady a step was blasphemy.

Of Severus, he had seen nothing at all.

After three days of silence and short, painful meetings, Harry found that he was looking forward to the training sessions. They were grim affairs, too, with most people concentrating too hard on the job at hand to talk about anything else. Whenever the mood would lighten or a funny situation would arise, one glance at the strategy section of the room, at what had begun to be thought of as _her_ chair would be enough to silence them all again.

And Harry found that he missed her, more than he had ever thought he could miss a human being.

It wasn't just her presence, her warmth and her intelligence, her dry humour and her ability to understand him completely before he had even noticed something was wrong with him, although he did miss all that, oh Merlin how he missed it.

But with her gone (_died_, a cold voice whispered through his mind), it was as if the Order had lost some of its spirit, some of its edge. There was nothing to surprise them these days, no one who would spring mad, totally unexpected situations on them.

And of course, the Order had lost Severus all but in name.

He was still working for them, that couldn't be denied, was working harder than he ever had. Every morning when Harry stepped into Headquarters there would be new rolls of parchment waiting for him, Albus, or any other member of the Order, neatly placed on the table in front of their usual chair, bearing their name in Severus' hand.

But he never appeared to the meetings, save but for short snitches of time during which he overwhelmed them with advice and information, everything presented in the same, emotionless tone.

No longer was his voice smooth and elegant. It was precise, clipped, like that of an automaton. And so was his face, that sallow, expressionless plane on which no thought, no emotion dared appear.

In the presence of this cold, professional machine their spymaster had turned into, Harry found himself even wishing for the Potions Master of old. Hateful and vindictive as he had been, at least he had seemed alive.

One more person in Harry's life that he had lost.

Surprisingly enough, Ron had been spending more time around Harry these past days than he had become used to over the last months. Whether it was because Hermione's death had finally made him grow up or whether he was using Draco's absence to be Harry's friend again without those 'Slytherin-complications', Ron had been around nearly every day.

But unfortunately, and it was painful for Harry to admit it, Ron wasn't the friend he needed, and Ron's visits hadn't been greeted with an ounce of the relief and excitement that Harry showed now, as he quickly stepped through the magical tapestry situated near the Great Hall.

And there was Draco, waiting near the main entrance, his posture an elegant relaxation that screamed insolence.

Harry smiled. If Draco was acting this mock-arrogantly in public, nothing bad could have happened during his absence. He knew the worried, closed up Draco and he didn't look like this. But still, something was strange…

Harry squinted slightly and took a step closer. There was something… unfamiliar in the way Draco moved, unfamiliar and terribly known at the same time, but Harry simply couldn't place it. Nor did he understand why the satisfied relaxation on Draco's face seemed to change the moment he took in Hogwarts' interior… or rather, saw Harry.

"Potter," Draco snarled, in a tone he had only ever used in public these past months, "And here I thought I'd finally be rid of you."

For a moment, hurt was all Harry felt. They had been so close these past weeks, and since Draco knew how uneasy Harry had felt about his visit at Malfoy Manor, he hadn't expected such a cold greeting.

But then his Slytherin thoughts – that rather recent acquisition of his – kicked in, reminding him that while Harry knew well enough that the castle was empty and security tight, that no one could possible hear or see them, Draco didn't know, and that he was far too careful to risk anything.

"No one's here, Draco," He said, but the strange expression on Draco's face didn't change.

"How good of you to tell me, Potter," He mocked, "Then I suppose there's no reason to pretend, is there?"

Harry nodded, not sure where this was leading. All of a sudden he was wary, as if there was some danger waiting for him he hadn't yet fully realized.

But that was stupid, wasn't it? This was Draco! No metamorphmagus or imperioed person could get past the wards undetected, and after the Moody-fiasco in fourth year, Dumbledore had made quite sure that such a thing would never happen again. But what was that strange glint in Draco's eyes?

"Let's have some fun, Potter, shall we?"

When Draco's slashing curse left his wand in a burning arc of red flame, Harry stumbled back as if Draco had punched him in the face. Only the long hours of training with the Order made him react – without knowing what he did he erected a shield and the curse bounced off to leave a slight scorch mark in the old oak doors of the Great Hall.

"What is the matter with you?" Harry shouted, now angry and more than a bit unnerved. "You could have hurt me!"

"Believe it or not, Potter," Draco drawled, that unbearable strangeness still in his voice, "That was my intention."

Another curse and another, hastily erected shield. Harry was glad for everything he had learned over the last months – he couldn't have held himself in an all-out duel against Draco otherwise.

"Stop it," He yelled, still not believing that this was really happening, "What is _wrong_ with you?"

"What is wrong with _you,_ Potter?" Draco yelled back, still firing curses that were bordering illegal, "You're acting as if this surprises you! I thought you wanted nothing more than to get me?"

And suddenly, so suddenly that he gasped and his shield nearly faltered, Harry understood. The triggered Obliviate! If Draco was truly back to his old pureblood arrogance and his hate for Harry, the only explanation could be that he had reverted to his Death Eater-persona. Something must have triggered the protection spell!

Harry nearly sighed with relief. But there was still the fact of Draco's very real, very dangerous hate and the spells he was sending towards his supposed enemy to be considered.

Glad for the training that enabled him to fight and plan at the same time, Harry ducked a particularly nasty spell, his thoughts on overdrive.

He had trained with Draco often enough over the last months to know that he couldn't beat him, at least not in the straightforward, Gryffindor way.

But then he had learned not only to think like a Gryffindor by now, hadn't he? He remembered the Draco of past years, before Lucius Malfoy's imprisonment and the behaviour of Slytherin house had humbled him.

He had been arrogant and impulsive, always bragging and more intent on showing flashy moves than getting the thing done. He had been something of a coward, too. Harry grinned as he remembered the panic on Draco's face when Hermione had punched him, or when the fake-Moody had threatened him. But that grin vanished quickly under the onslaught of red lights that looked suspiciously like _Crucio_.

Was Draco mad, to use the Unforgivables in the middle of Hogwarts? But then that had been one of Draco's major faults, hadn't it? Not thinking about the consequences, getting lost in the situation without one thought for what would come after?

Harry threw himself away from one of the curses, then conjured a wooden shield to stop the next one. Perhaps he could use this, he thought feverishly. Perhaps he could make Draco so angry that he let his guard down…

"So, back from Ferret Manor, are you, Malfoy?" He shouted, trying to imagine that this was just another mock fight like the ones they had had over the last months, that this meant nothing to Draco and couldn't hurt him.

"Is your father still mad from his visit to Azkaban?"

"At least my father is still alive, Potter," Draco snarled back, but Harry noticed how his face reddened and his wand movements became more aggressive.

"Only if you call crawling in front of a half blood like Voldemort a life," Harry yelled back, sure by now that more of Draco's spells went wide than before. "Tell me, what is he willing to sacrifice to your wannabe-Lord? Is your mother warming snake-face's bed at night? Or was that why he wanted you to visit, ferret face?"

Draco gave a yell of pure, untamed rage and stormed towards him, throwing caution to the wind. But Harry had expected this. When Draco came at him, he stepped sharply to the side and used his better angle to fire off a quick succession of stupefies. One of them hit dead centre.

Draco collapsed most inelegantly. Harry looked at his friend, sprawled in front of the Entrance of the Great Hall, his face still twisted in a grimace of hate. He became aware of his own laboured breathing and the sweat that was soaking the back of his shirt.

For a moment, he couldn't bring himself to think or plan. There was only bone-deep exhaustion in his mind, and a dull sort of pain. Then, he wearily levitated the body of his friend and began the slow trip back to the tapestry.

"It's all right, Draco," He promised, although he knew that Draco couldn't hear him, "I'll get you to Dumbledore and he'll reverse the spell. Everything will be all right."

But Dumbledore wasn't at Headquarters, nor was he at his office, and only while staring stupidly at the Headmaster's empty desk did he realize that Dumbledore had left for his weekly meeting with Fudge over an hour ago.

Dumbledore couldn't help them. And that was why five minutes later, with a painfully thudding heart and an unconscious Draco Malfoy in tow, Harry approached the tapestry leading to Severus' chambers and knocked.

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Breathing was an effort these days. Severus remembered times like these, times when only sheer discipline, an iron will and a constant feeling of guilt had kept him going, but that had been before… before things had changed, and he had become too used to… to not being alone not to feel the painfulness of this distance between him and the world.

But what did the world have to give him, now?

Thinking was an effort, too. His mind, once the only safe place he'd had left in this word, had become a dangerous swamp threatening to swallow him whole, a minefield of sudden painful memories and long buried dreams.

And behind everything, every thought and fear and wish, lurked that black abyss, the knowledge of her betrayal and death, the knowledge of the sacrifice he hadn't prevented.

Of the task he had set himself and which he had failed to fulfil.

He hadn't kept her safe.

Every dream, every thought, every exchange wit his colleagues reminded him of that.

So he didn't think. He didn't talk.

He functioned.

And in the cold clarity of logic, in the routine of gestures and masks and hard work, the pain could be kept down.

Sometimes.

Work helped. Bringing forward their plan, pouring hour after hour into working out all those fine details that could go wrong and must therefore be considered from every angle – he felt safe doing that, able to forget the very real, very bleak world out there for a while.

It was also a way to remember… without remembering, a clinical, rational memorial that wouldn't have him think about brown hair shining in the sunlight, about chocolate eyes and mischievous smiles, about… STOP IT!

Functioning.

He would stand up every morning and have a cup of coffee. He didn't drink tea anymore, not since he'd smashed his black tea pot in a fit of rage. He'd stood and stared, stupidly, at the shards for over an hour, before simply leaving them to litter the floor. His rooms had seemed colder afterwards.

He ate seldom and when he did, it was under the close scrutiny of Jane. The house elf looked worried these days, worried and mournful, and both feelings were nothing he would have associated with Jane before. But she too missed…

Severus made a fist and hit the wall, hard. A distant part of himself could feel the pain and the wet, sticky feeling of his own blood, but it was nothing to the relief he felt, with his mind taken off…

He would stand up and have a cup of coffee. He seldom showered, because she had always showered when… He would have a cup of coffee and move to the desk, his own desk, in his own room, because those dunderheads from the Order simply wouldn't leave him alone, no matter what he did.

They seemed to think he needed contact. They thought he needed to talk about. They wanted him to move on with his life, as if he could ever…

He would move to the desk and write a list with tasks to be completed that day. Those lists were enormous, becoming longer and longer every morning, and still he would find himself with too much time on his hands at night, wandering the winding staircase up and down, refusing to look at the room in which… refusing to remember… he would wander through his quarters until dawn lit his library or exhaustion overwhelmed him and allowed him a few, restless hours of sleep.

He would compile files for the different Order members, things that they needed to know or should concentrate on in an effort to care for the people she had loved… He would compile files and leave them at their places around the large oval table, always at different times during the night, because he didn't want them to wait for him, didn't want to see the faces of Draco and Harry, who had been her…

Those files were nearly all the contact to the Order he had these days. Sometimes he would appear in the gym or a meeting for short, intense moments of criticism and harsh warnings, but on the whole, Albus, Moody and Remus had everything well in hand there.

He didn't like to look at the duelling platform. It brought back memories…

And he met his contacts. Strange people, always hasty, who barely knew him and didn't care about the reasons behind his sudden change. People he had a purely professional relationship with, spies about whose life and death he didn't care, unlike…

Spies and informants, aurors and petty thieves. They were the only people he really listened to these days, if one didn't take the letters Albus sent him into account. Daily letters. He didn't mind letters so much, since she had barely ever written to him. Only to Harry and…

But those letters still irritated him, like an itch he couldn't scratch. He knew that all those people waiting on the other side of the magical tapestry wanted something from him, something he had once possessed but couldn't give anymore, something more than the greasy git of the dungeons or the stone faced Death Eater could offer.

But there wasn't anything else left.

Not if he wanted to survive. Something she had asked of him in her note, something she had demanded although she couldn't possibly expect him to…

Severus snarled as the magical tapestry chimed an alarm. Someone was requesting entrance from the Headquarters. And from the persistent noise, this someone was very determined.

He hurled his cup of coffee away from him, not even caring if it hit the books (she had loved those books, had loved them so much, and now they stood row in row like abandoned children, waiting for new parents in the dreary cold of an orphanage) and stalked over to the tapestry.

He could feel the way his shoulders tensed painfully and his jaw clenched tightly. He didn't want to talk to people. He didn't want to see the pity in their eyes, the knowledge that he had become a shell of a man because he had been left, because she…

He dropped the wards on the tapestry and stepped through.

The unexpected sight of an unconscious Draco hovering in midair made him stop in his tracks.

_What the hell?_

"It's Draco," Harry explained, unnecessarily. Severus felt a headache bloom behind his temples. He wanted to be alone again.

"He returned to the castle a few minutes ago. From the way he's been acting I can only guess that his Obliviate was triggered by something. He attacked me, Severus."

Severus gritted his teeth. He couldn't ignore this or solve it quickly – their plan would stand and fall with the way Draco had held himself in the presence of his father. He would have to find out what had happened, even though the last time he had delved into Draco's mind to remove the effects of the Obliviate had been when she…

"Step through," He ordered curtly, pointing at the tapestry to make sure Harry understood him. He couldn't solve this problem here, where every moment someone might burst in and disturb his concentration. Loath as he was to let them enter his quarters, it was the only place that would allow him to work.

_Logic_, He intoned silently as he followed Harry back to his chambers. _Ratio. Coldness. Discipline. Work. You can do this._

Harry stopped abruptly when he saw Severus' library, but Severus kept his eyes on the unconscious Draco. He knew what Harry was seeing.

The second desk, several arm chairs and sofas gone, leaving empty spaces in the careful design of the room.

Books, ripped from their places and lying on the ground like birds with broken wings. The shards of a black tea pot, glittering in the afternoon light. The fireplace dirty and the fire unlit. Unlit for a long time.

"Take him over there," Severus ordered, noticing how rough his voice was. All the better. She had loved his voice, but now he…

"Put him on the sofa."

Harry nodded, his eyes darting to Severus' face for a moment as if he wanted to say something, but then he wisely decided to remain silent. He _had_learned something, after all.

_Coldness. Control. Distance_.

Draco looked healthy and normal, apart from the fact that Severus had never seen his face this relaxed, and his diagnostic spells revealed no influence on him whether by spell or potion.

_Remove the Obliviate then. Wake him up. Listen to what he has to say. _

Severus took a deep breath, forcing his shoulders to relax and his jaw to unclench.

Then he bowed down until he could pry open Draco's eyelids with one hand, delved into his mind quickly, without looking left or right, and spoke the sequence they had established, so many months ago, as the only key to unlock Draco's true mind. The strings of sound were rising easily to his mind, although speaking them was like swallowing broken glass._She _had designed that sequence.

_Coldness. Control. Distance_.

He finished the counterspell and drew his wand to enervate Draco. For a moment, the smooth wood felt alien in his hands. He hadn't used much magic over the last weeks, preferring the tangible feeling of doing things with his hands. And there hadn't been much he had done, now that he thought about it, nothing but sitting hunched over his desk, wandering through his chambers or staring sightlessly out of the window for hours on end.

_Coldness. Control. Distance_.

Perhaps he had wanted to put the work of his hands between him and the world that had killed…

For a moment, Draco lay very still, only his moving chest indicating that he was alive. He was breathing slowly, hesitatingly, as if he wasn't quite sure whether to trust the air that filled his lungs.

Then, abruptly, his body began to shook, a slight trembling at first, then increasingly violent until Draco was flung off the sofa and to the ground.

Drawing his knees to his chest and burying his head in his hands, Draco gave in to the shaking. He looked incredibly small like this, like a ten-year-old left by his mother.

A high, keening sound suddenly filled the air, and Harry actually looked up and around to determine its origins before he seemed to realize that the sound, this terrible, wailing sound of loss and horror, came from Draco.

_Coldness. Control. Distance_. Severus intoned, but it was hard to stay distant in the face of this, not knowing what caused Draco's pain.

"Merlin," Draco now moaned, his voice as rough as Severus', only barely emerging from the hands that still cradled his face.

"Merlin, no…"

"Draco," Harry now said, his voice quivering and insecure. He was reaching for his friend, but only half-heartedly, as if he wasn't sure how Draco would reaction.

"How the _fuck_ could I do that?" Draco now yelled, no, whimpered, and Severus' heart went cold.

"Draco?" But Harry's voice seemed to have no effect on the Slytherin. He reminded Severus of Hermione under shock, back when she had…

_Coldness. Control. Distance_.

Obviously, Draco needed someone to snap him out of his increasingly distressed state. Severus knew exactly how to do that.

"DRACO MALFOY," He thundered, surprised how loud and commanding his own voice could sound when inside he was nothing but a heap of broken glass. "You will look at me and tell me what happened to you this instance!"

For a moment, Severus expected Draco to ignore his order, but then, slowly the shaking stopped. Draco let his hands fall to his sides limply and looked up, so that Severus could finally see his face and the huge eyes that stared from it. They were completely dry, but red rimmed and blood shot as if Draco had cried for hours.

"Hermione's alive," Draco whispered.

The bubble of cold clarity around Severus shattered.

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"What are we going to do?" Minerva, for once neither controlled nor self-assured, whispered in desperation.

"I am not sure," Albus answered, his eyes turning slowly towards the silent Severus in whose quarters they had met.

"Draco told me everything he noticed about the mansion. He even lent me the memory so that I could watch it myself in the pensieve. There's no hint to its location. Lucius Malfoy was very careful with the information he divulged. We do not even know whether it is situated in Great Britain or abroad."

"And the place where Draco met the Dark Lord?" Harry asked.

"I'm afraid we face the same problem there, my dear boy. They portkeyed in – no apparition trace we could track. The whole complex was underground and unplottable – there is no possibility to find out more."

"Draco could go back in, with a tracer spell or a portkey on him. Then he could grab Hermione and portkey out," Harry suggested, though there was a quiver in his voice that told Albus how afraid young Harry was of losing the Slytherin.

"If Tom is only half as clever as I know him to be, Harry," Albus anwered wearily, "He will have warded his strongholds against both possibilities. I certainly have done it for Hogwarts, and Miss Granger told me…" He faltered for a moment, his eyes once more on Severus, whose face was hidden in the shadows.

"Miss Granger told me that she had never seen a place with warding as careful as Tom's headquarters. She herself wasn't willing to risk bringing a portkey there."

Albus felt old these days, so old and tired that he imagined he could hear his bones slowly disintegrate and return to the dust they had come from.

He knew the question Harry would ask, knew that as a Gryffindor, their young hero couldn't help himself, even if he had acted far older than his years in the face of his friend's death. But now, knowing that Miss Granger was still alive and would be so for a terribly, terribly long time, Albus knew that there would be only one thought in his mind.

"But how can we rescue her, then?"

And Albus, old and so weary of this question that had been asked of him, again and again and again, through more wars and conflicts than he could count, shook his head in tired resignation.

"I don't know, dear boy," He whispered softly, "I don't think we can."

Not wanting to meet Severus' or Harry's eyes, too weary now to bear their grief, Albus turned his head to watch the shadows in the corner of the library.

For a moment, he thought he saw something, a dark, small figure, half hidden by a bookcase, and straightened a bit. If the past had taught him anything at all, it was that they could never hope to be completely safe, not even in rooms warded like these.

But then he looked closer and recognized Jane, Severus' headstrong house elf. He relaxed slightly, returning to the business at hand. Jane was quite loyal to her employer, after all, and didn't need to be supervised. For when had a loyal house elf been ever anything but harmless?

What Albus didn't see through the shadows of the approaching evening was the way Jane's hands had grabbed the cloth of her apron, twisting and stretching it ruthlessly, and the cold glint in her eyes.

If he had noticed it, he might have changed his opinion about the harmlessness of house elves.

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	69. Jane Undercover

A/N: I'm back! Finally! Thank you all for your thoughts and support – it really helped me to know that you thought about me and this story. For all those who wrote and inquired what was going on, let me once more point you to my livejournal, where you can find information of that kind.

And one word to the – few! – reviewers who complained and threatened: Making me feel bad really doesn't make me update faster, it just irritates me. Please bear in mind that, no matter how much you love this story and want me to write fast, I still have a life that takes precedence!

I hope you enjoy this chapter. I will try to update 'Had I Known' over the next days. The promised Draco/Harry one shot should be up some time next week.

All the best, Kayly

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This chapter is for all the house elves in this world, human and otherwise.

Jane Undercover

It was a principle of Jane's never to involve herself in human affaires.

In her experience, dealing with the problems of wizards and their likes led to nothing but trouble, especially for a house elf.

When wizards wanted something they would plead and whimper and make a fool of themselves and promise everything and anything they could think of. If you had given them what they wanted, however, the best thing you could hope for was a kick and a shout. Wizards never felt themselves indebted to house elves.

She wasn't sure why she was willing to break her principles for that bushy haired, headstrong, muggleborn chit of a girl that Severus had come to call the 'Lady of the House' in more than just playfulness.

Perhaps because of the way she had changed her boy, had reached right into that cold heart of his and breathed new life into it until she barely recognized the cool, controlled and distant man she had known in the passionate, humorous and self indulgently brilliant Severus.

Perhaps because she had rescued him from the long process of decay he had begun twenty years ago, when that monster had branded him.

Perhaps because she alone, from generations of witches and wizards Jane had known, had tried to fight for the house elves, naively and more than a bit stupid, but with honest fire.

Or – although she would never have admitted that aloud - it was simply because Jane had never loved another human being that much again since she had held the small Severus, barely a day old, in her arms and had listened to his baby breath.

"Dobby Houseelf," She said now, wearing her stern face. Although no human child at Hogwarts knew it, much of Severus teaching attitude had been copied from her, back when he had been too young and terrified to impress the children with his own persona. The only thing he hadn't imitated had been her kindness towards the small ones – that had been left aside like the hope that was locked tightly within Pandora's box.

"Dobby Houseelf. Stop quivering and answer my questions now, or your friends will mistake you for a donkey when I pull your ears long!"

"But Miss Jane…" Dobby whined, twisting said ears as if he wanted to fulfil her threat all on his own. "Dobby is…"

"And speak like the intelligent creature you are, Dobby Houseelf! You know I don't hold with that nonsense. You know your grammar just as well as any wizard!"

It was a deplorable practice among the house elves, this abuse of the English language. As if appearing helpless and stupid and less sentient would make the wizards and witches notice them less. Or punish them less.

It was a slave's practice, Jane had always thought, and her studies of various slaveholder cultures had confirmed it, a small fact that made them less than they were so that wizards could explain away their suppression with natural laws and their superior intellect. Jane didn't hold with it at all.

"Yes, Miss Jane," Dobby agreed, now looking quite sheepish. She had been so proud of him, that tortured little Malfoy elf, when he had broken free of his chains – mental and physical – and become the second free house elf ever to want his freedom. But instead of rallying the other elves to his cause, he had decided to be _cute _instead of powerful. Sometimes, Jane wondered why she bothered at all.

"It's just, Miss Jane, that house elves never betray their Masters' secrets…"

"You have no Master anymore, Dobby," Jane corrected sternly and saw Dobby flinch, "You are a free elf, a _person_, not a slave. It is your dignity that commands you tonight to do what is right, not what is easy! Step away from the last vestiges of your mental imprisonment and embrace the freedom that you suffered for!"

Now Dobby looked simply confused.

Jane sighed. Sometimes she understood Severus' approach to other people, she really did.

"Dobby Houseelf," She tried again, this time without the sternness. "Miss Granger, the best friend of Harry Potter, has been kidnapped by your former evil Master. Harry Potter is suffering greatly, and only you can help me make him happy again. Will you do it?"

Rescued from the abyss of political philosophy, Dobby released his ears, _visibly _thought (_Yes, I know why Severus always wants to smack them_), and beamed.

"Dobby will…" He began happily, noticed her frown and corrected himself hastily, "I will do everything to help the great Harry Potter, Miss Jane! I will even go back to the bad, evil…"

His head twitched, as if he wanted to bang it against a solid, painful object, and Jane reached out and steadied him nearly without thought. She was quite used to automatisms like this one. In the room she used to teach the small ones no desk was free of dents that had been caused by the heads of self punishing house elves.

"That won't be necessary," She said, watching resignedly as the expression of heroic martyrdom on Dobby's face faded into relief, "All I need is the information I asked of you. NOW!" With the last word, her class persona returned with a vengeance, and before Dobby had even noticed it, he had babbled out everything she needed to know.

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Donning the uniform of a house elf was shockingly simple and yet the most difficult thing she had ever done – so much more than just a physical act. An observer would only have noticed a slightly irritated frown marring her face, but the truth was that seeing the spotless white apron and the broach that would hold it filled Jane with dread.

She snorted as she folded it around her naked body, the technique coming easily to her even after all these years, but the snort threatened to turn into a sob as her eyes sought her own image in the mirror.

Nearly twenty years her freedom had lasted, she had taught generations of elves, had conferred even with the great Albus Dumbledore and the famous Harry Potter, and still it took nothing more than a plain, white towel to reduce her to a thing, to bring it all back.

Twenty years, and here she was – a slave, indistinguishable from the hundreds of elves that laboured for their masters' comfort all over the country.

A white towel and demure manner, and everything she had ever said and done vanished as if it had never existed.

And the truth was, she admitted to herself in the face of her own slave-image, the truth was that she had forgotten how it felt. She had forgotten what it was like to be a victim, to know what was coming, all the pain and humiliation, and yet to hunch your shoulders and take it without complaint.

Suddenly, all the irritation she had felt towards Severus' and later Hermione's little spy games, the anger at their stubbornness and the doubt about their work's usefulness evaporated.

_This _had to be the way it had felt whenever they had gone to Voldemort, this miserable trembling and quaking in limbs that normally held a calm strength, this sudden weakness of the mind that suggested to turn around and run, no matter what was right or necessary. If this was what they had felt, every single time, before they had put on the white mask and gone to their master, then they were they bravest persons on earth.

Then their courage was worth giving her life for.

She took a deep breath, thrust her shoulders back and once more adjusted the towel draped around her. Then, she snapped her finger and was gone from her rooms, instantly transported to another place.

She looked up, careful to cock her ears in a way that appeared obedient and fearful, and found herself in a large, nearly empty kitchen. An old, female elf was labouring in one corner, cleaning dishes with the tired movements of one whose magic was almost spent.

Jane could tell that this one's time had nearly come, and in a good, caring household she would have been freed from work long ago. Here, she could only hope to be left alone as much as possible and not to lose the right to have her head mounted to a wall when she was gone.

"Jinny I is. Master sends me to help with the cleaning," She introduced herself, adding the gestures that indicated her origin and ownership status. She had spent the last two days learning these signs, but it seemed as if her effort had been unnecessary, for the old house elf only turned her head in the general direction of Jane, not even bothering to feign interest.

Inwardly, Jane smiled with satisfaction. Just what she had hoped for. This house elf would remember nothing and tell even less.

"You will be cleaning. I is doing the cooking for Master Malfoy," She mumbled in Jane's general direction, and Jane nodded her consent just as vaguely.

It was rather anticlimactic, really. After all, it had taken her two days to make her way to this mansion, two days of visiting the households of known and rumoured Death Eaters, two days of meeting the house elves Dobby had named to her as malcontents, creatures so tortured and abused that they might be persuaded to let a few family secrets slip.

There were no political loyalties among house elves, she had often explained to those few humans who cared to listen, only the loyalties to their houses and families. And even those were open to interpretation or could be circumvented with the help of a bit of careful verbal juggling. Or overcome by sheer Jane-terror.

Because loyalties, despite the simple way wizards and witches understood them, were anything but. During her lessons to young house elves Jane usually compared them to finely spun webs, and to navigate them without tearing the fabric of family ties, friendships, alliances or financial dependencies took a master.

A good thing she was one, or she would never have found herself in this mansion, cleaning her way inconspicuously towards Hermione's prison.

She recognized the room's door from the Malfoy boy's description. He had been horrified of what he had found in it, and her heart was beating faster with worry when she reached out for the doorknob.

She was so tense and nervous that when a sharp voice rang out behind her she was cowering and whimpering like a true house elf would before she had even realized what happened.

"What do you think you're doing, elf," A male, refined, utterly cold voice. She didn't have to look up to recognize the voice of Lucius Malfoy – he and his father had been guests of her former Masters often enough to make his aura terribly familiar.

For a moment, she wondered if her rescue mission would end with her stuffed head mounted to some mansion wall, or whether she would be forced to do something as ridiculous as ironing her own hands. Neither thought pleased her.

"Master bid Jinny take care of mudblood," Jane mumbled, her eyes on her feet and her shoulders trembling slightly in the age old fear of wizards every house elf was born with. "Jinny makes everything clean and nice."

She had nearly forgotten how this felt, in the years of freedom and comfort Severus had granted her, but now it was all back, the helplessness, the fear and underlying everything the eager subservience, the wish to please her Master.

_You had better survive, girl_, She thought deep down in her mind, _I won't tolerate having done this for nothing_.

The cane that connected painfully with her ribs was hard and cold, and air escaped from Jane's lungs painfully. She stayed on the floor where his attack had thrown her, awaiting her punishment, but nothing else happened. It seemed that this was Lucius Malfoy's charming way of telling a house elf to get on with its job.

"See that you don't heal her, or touch her in any way," He drawled, a strange undertone of possessiveness in his voice. "She belongs to me."

Jane took a deep breath and scrambled to her feet in a way as undignified as possible.

"Yes, Master sir, Jinny will, Sir," She babbled and could hear a disgusted sigh, the only sign that Malfoy had bought her act.

She looked up just as he vanished around a corner. Then, she took a deep breath and opened the door.

The stench nearly overwhelmed her. House elves were very perceptible to smells, which made it easy for them to judge the quality of food and the hygienic standards of a home, but it also left them easily nauseated and wary of bad smells.

They hated the lingering taste of sickness and of blood, the residual stench of pain and fear that was left when a creature was hurt.

For house elves, it was not an easy thing to work for Death Eaters, and morals had nothing to do with it at all.

It took all her determination to step into the room and close the door behind her. The stench seemed to cling to her mouth and nose and coat her lungs with its ugliness. Suddenly, she wasn't sure if she really wanted to see what lay on the bed.

But she hadn't survived so much for so long in vain. Discipline had kept her going when other house elves would have given up a hundred times over. Discipline would keep her going now.

She took another step forwards into this strangely white, scarily clean room, and saw the bed. The motionless figure lying on it. The blood.

"Oh you poor girl," She whispered, all sternness and efficiency forgotten in the face of this evil. "You poor, poor girl."

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Harry knocked sharply at the edge of the magical tapestry, waited a minute, then knocked again. These days, there was no other way to reach Severus than to out-stubborn him.

When nothing happened, he shared a short, questioning glance with Remus, who was standing by his side, practically vibrating with tension.

"Are you sure we are doing the right thing?" Harry asked, and although he looked anything but happy about being here, Remus nodded.

"It can't go on like this," He answered, "He must confront what has happened, or he will never be the same again."

Silently, Harry wondered whether one could really apply Gryffindor psychology like that to Slytherins. Draco would have sneered at Remus' words and told them that repression was nature's precious gift to humans, had Draco not been hidden away in his own chambers, still consumed by grief and guilt.

Harry sighed. Their group was falling apart so quickly it would be a wonder if enough of them stayed sane till Halloween. Somehow he had never expected the greatest danger to come from within. But then he had never known much about group dynamics, had he?

And he had never had the voice of a Slytherin in the back of his mind before, whispering to him that some things could not be solved by confrontation, that there was a sort of grief that couldn't be eased by tea and sympathy. Not even by whisky.

Remus knocked again, and suddenly Harry wasn't altogether sure that this had been a wise idea. He wasn't even sure why he had been shanghaied into accompanying Remus. The werewolf had told him something about Harry being Hermione's best friend, after all, and that this would provide a bond with Severus, but for the love of Merlin Harry couldn't imagine any bond between them. He could even less imagine telling Severus that he understood how he felt – the other suggestion Remus had made.

"Shouldn't we…" He began, but was interrupted by the golden glow that suddenly spread around the tapestry. It seemed that Severus had decided to answer their call.

They stepped into his chambers, and Harry had to make a physical effort not to hide behind Remus or turn on his heel and flee. He had been shocked when he had entered the library two days ago, with the unconscious Draco floating behind him, shocked at the changes this room had undergone.

It was even worse now. Tapestries and pictures had been ripped from the walls and it looked as if someone had smashed most of the glass and crystal to pieces in a fit of rage. The only thing not looking violated and desolate was Severus' desk, the only desk left in the room, which was overflowing with parchment and books.

It had been moved to face a bare, white stretch of wall, as if the one working at it had refused to face his chambers. Or the world.

In the midst of it all, Severus, greasy haired, sallow faced, with eyes of a dull black and surrounded by shadows stood awaiting them. He looked as if he belonged here, in this place of ruin and despair.

"Yes," He said instead of a greeting, his face dark and forbidding and still without expression, like an empty house.

Suddenly, Harry found himself agreeing with Remus. This couldn't go on.

"We… we missed you during the meeting, Severus," Remus began, the strength in his voice crumbling under Severus' non-presence.

"I don't believe you did," Severus said, clipped. "The notes I left at your places detail the newest developments, and every other decision rests safely in the hands of our venerable leader."

For a moment, his voice regained a hint of the old sarcasm, only to pale again into nothingness. "Thus, there is no reason for me to attend."

He half turned towards the tapestry, as if expecting them to leave again now that business was concluded.

Harry fidgeted uneasily. What wouldn't he have given, in any of his seven years' worth of Potions classes, for a Snape this disinterested, this invisible. He could remember the times when Severus' sheer presence would change the atmosphere of a room.

Now, he commanded as much presence as a potted plant.

A dead potted plant.

You couldn't even call it tragic, Harry thought as his eyes darted over Severus' ink-stained fingers, his wrinkled, dusty black robes. It was just sad, sad in a quiet, bone-breaking sort of way.

He caught Remus' expectant eyes and once more concentrated on the situation at hand. He had no idea what to do about this. He had felt loss, too, in the past, was feeling it even now, but that loss was nothing compared to the thing that had taken hold of Severus and ripped his life apart.

One look at the man and his chambers was enough to make clear that nothing could help. But he had promised to try, and try he would.

"What about the training?" He asked quietly and Severus' face turned back from the tapestry towards him, as if he was surprised they were still speaking to him. "Your presence there helped us a lot. And especially Ron needs all the help he can get."

Although he felt a bit like betraying his mate, Harry knew it was nothing but the truth. The extra work he had done in fifth year for the DA and the additional hours he had put in with Draco had pushed Harry to a level of defensive and offensive expertise few seventh years ever reached. That his two best friends, Draco and Hermione, still surpassed him easily had only added to his motivation.

Severus frowned. He looked as if he was thinking, something Harry had only seen on his face when their Spymaster was faced with a difficult piece of code or a question of high strategic importance. That an answer to this simple remark, an evaluation of Harry's meaning would take him so much concentration frightened Harry. It showed just how exhausted Severus was.

"You have Moody and Lupin for that," Severus said after a moment, obviously deciding to ignore the meaning behind Harry's words. "The Headmaster informed me in a letter that research on the soul curse you will use on Voldemort is nearly finished, and that the cloaking devices Minerva and I developed have been tested sufficiently. The training with these two aspects will take up most of your time, and since I am neither an expert on ancient curses nor on transfiguration, I fail to see the necessity of my presence."

"Perhaps it is not your expertise we miss, Severus," Remus put in gently. "Perhaps we are missing you."

Severus looked truly confused for a moment. "Then you are fools," He said, his voice rough. "There's nothing there to miss."

"There is, Severus," Remus disagreed quietly, but firmly, and for a moment Harry saw something flicker across the dark man's face, an emotion so raw and complicated he couldn't identify it.

Then, Severus' face stiffened and he turned away, refusing to meet Remus' eyes.

"Our affiliation with the aurors is improving satisfactorily," He said as if they had never left the topic of Order business behind. "I have contacts positioned near every suspected Death Eater sympathizer and listening devices planted in critical Ministry offices. Our preparations are ahead of schedule. I am confident that we will…"

"Severus," Remus again said softly, and Harry saw the emotion on Severus' face again. This time, he recognized it as fury. And fear. As if Severus was afraid that they would do something to him.

"This isn't good for you," Remus continued. "You can't hide away from the world and bury yourself in work forever!"

"Stick to your business, Remus, and I'll stick to mine," Severus said with no inflection at all. But Remus, caring, stubborn Remus, refused to back down.

"You have to deal with this, Severus," He urged him. "You _have_ to mourn!"

Severus laughed, a short, abrupt bark that frightened Harry.

"And what would you have me do?" He asked bitterly. "Swoon and brood and soliloquize? Do you expect me to follow the proper rites? Well, I suppose I could beat my chest and tear my hair out and smear ash into my face. Would that make you happier?"

"This isn't about happiness," Remus said. "This is about your health. You are not taking care of yourself!"

"I am taking care of my work," Severus hissed. "That's all that matters. I _will_ do what has to be done, and you have no right to interfere beyond that! Are you questioning my usefulness now?"

Remus sighed with exasperation and opened his mouth to argue on, but Harry, seeing the fury and despair in Severus' eyes deepen, beat him to it.

"Severus," He said quietly, the way he would have talked to calm one of Hagrid's animals. "We're just here to support you. Just tell us what we can do to help."

Slowly, Severus turned towards him and met his eyes.

"Hermione's out there, alive, in the power of Lucius Malfoy," He said, and the terrible thing about it was how calm he sounded, how matter of fact. Yelling or crying would have been easier to bear, Harry thought. "Tell me, what could help against that."

It wasn't a question. He knew that there wasn't an answer.

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Over the next days, Jane cleaned Hermione's room, the adjoining corridor and anything else she could find in the mansion twice a day. Her work was spotless, her behaviour humble and very house elvish, and Malfoy had stopped noticing her before night had fallen on her first day as Jinny the Death Eater-slave.

It was a horrible time. She would dart through the large house and polish a brass knob here, dust a book there, and then, quite suddenly, she would hear screams. Those screams were a good sign, since they meant that Hermione was still alive enough to utter them, but they tore at her fiercely, and the necessity to do nothing was worse than Jane had imagined.

But she didn't forget what Hermione had always said, and what Severus had echoed with less conviction, and so she did nothing to risk the plan. When six days had passed however and nothing out of the ordinary had happened, she judged that her novelty status had worn off completely and that Lucius Malfoy wouldn't even remember the change of house elves.

He left shortly after breakfast to parts unknown. She had tried over the past week to find out as much about his schedule and whereabouts as possible, but if Lucius Malfoy kept notes at all, he had them hidden away where snooping house elves could not find them, and he never used a portkey that she could have inspected for residual magic or locator spells.

This time however, the sharp crack of his apparition was exactly what she had hoped for. She waited for fifteen tense minutes – her old Master Sinistrus Snape had been famous for leaving with lots of noise before silently sneaking back into the house, whether to spy on his house elves or his wife she had never found out – then searched the house magically for any living creature or detection spells. She found nothing, except for the old house elf whose name she still hadn't managed to find out.

Her legs felt slightly wobbly as she walked past the kitchen.

"I is cleaning the mudblood's room now," She announced as she had done every single day, and the old housekeeper sniffed to show her disgust of someone who was of even less value than a house elf, just as she had done every single day since Jane had arrived.

This time she was prepared for what waited in the bare room with the white washed walls, but she was still relieved when she saw that Malfoy had healed and cleaned Hermione after his last visit. He did not always do so, preferring sometimes to let her lie in her own blood and dirt.

Jane had obeyed his command of not touching her, had been in fact careful not to show her face since she couldn't be sure how sane Hermione still was or how well she would be able to hide secrets from Malfoy. But when she had cleaned the room on those days, only her discipline had kept her from rushing over to Hermione and rescuing her out of that horrible bed.

Now that she could finally do it, she felt the sudden fear that she had come too late.

"Hermione," She whispered, and her normal voice sounded strange to her after a week of squeaking and whining house elf talk. "Hermione!"

The girl on the bed didn't even stir. Malfoy had clothed her in a white silken negligee that showed exactly how much weight she had lost – skin so pale that it seemed translucent was drawn tightly over bones that were all too visible. Even though she had been healed, scars of an angry red criss-crossed her arms and legs.

"Hermione," Jane hissed again, and when the girl didn't react she reached out and slapped her face. They did not have time for pleasantries.

"Wake up girl, or you will miss your one chance to get out of this hell hole!"

Hermione's mouth trembled, and Jane held her breath, not sure what reaction to expect. Slowly, her eyes opened. But they were wild and empty and lacked the expression of determined will Jane had come to know so well. There was no recognition in them, no intelligence.

Despite the contrary evidence in front of her eyes, Jane had the sudden feeling that Hermione wasn't there at all, that the thing that had made her unique, had made her a person, had left for parts unknown. Suddenly, Jane felt only pity for this empty, abused body, vacated like an unloved toy and left in the hands of its tormentor.

"It's me, Jane," She whispered, knowing at the same time that it was useless. Wherever Hermione's mind had fled, Jane couldn't reach her there. She remembered the things she had seen and heard over the last days and silently hoped that the girl had fled far enough to escape Malfoy's torture as well.

Carefully, Jane reached out and raised Hermione's head against the board of her bed. The girl twitched, as if afraid of the foreign touch but too weak to resist.

"Calm down," Jane whispered. "Hermione, I need you to drink something for me. Open your mouth."

She didn't react, as if she hadn't heard her. But when Jane reached out to pry her mouth open, worried at the cold and lifeless feeling of Hermione's skin, the girl didn't struggle either.

"This is the Draught of Living Death," Jane explained, not sure if Hermione understood but knowing that if she did, she would want as much information as possible. "It will make you sleep."

She wanted to cry over the way Hermione's head lolled back, like that of a puppet whose strings had been cut, wanted to seek out Malfoy and kill him for what he had done to this once so fierce, so proud woman. The fact that she couldn't, that she would have to leave him in the safety of this unplottable mansion to not risk their plan, made her only angrier.

"Sleep now," She said, her voice the soft crooning she only used with small children and animals. "Sleep now, and when you wake up again, you will be with your family."

Carefully, she laid her back on the bed, then pried her mouth open and cleaned it thoroughly until no trace of the potion was left. She used a house elf spell to remove her own magical signature from Hermione's body, then quickly and efficiently cleaned the room – one eye and ear on the door the whole time.

Then, the waiting began. As Jane lingered near Hermione's room, one ear listening avidly for the sound of apparition while she pretended to give the corridors a thorough cleaning, she wondered how Malfoy would react when he returned and found his precious toy dead.

Jane didn't allow herself to worry or to think about what could go wrong. Nothing good had ever come from a pessimist's world view, she had preached that to Severus often enough. But despite her excellent mental discipline and the determination with which she fixed her attention on doorknobs that needed polishing, despite the fact that she knew things were out of her hands now, she couldn't help imagining.

The cold hard wood of his cane and the power of the wand hidden in it. His eyes, even colder and yet filled with that worrisome passion, that tenderness whenever he came close to Hermione.

What if he decided to _incendio_ her body? What if he refused to have her buried? The potion would imitate death only for twenty-four hours. If she was still near him then all would be lost.

She rubbed the doorknob harder. Keeping busy was the key, and she would keep busy, even if it meant cleaning every square inch of this wizard-cursed corridor…

The crack of apparition shattered the silence almost painfully. Without conscious thought, Jane dropped to the ground and began polishing a perfectly clean section of the marble floor tiles. She heard him leave the entrance hall, heard his steps as he turned to the left, heard the hard click of his cane on the tiles as he passed her.

She didn't move an inch from where she crouched, just hunched lower and pressed the cloth against the floor with all her strength.

He stopped in front of Hermione's room.

He opened the door.

He stepped in.

For a moment there was silence, just enough time to remind Jane that breathing, really, was essential even for house elves.

And then there was a roar, a wordless sound of anger and disappointment that made Jane forget all her determination and excellent mental discipline. She let go of the cloth, dropped to the floor and pressed herself against the marble as if it could offer any safety.

She gave an awkward little whimper, profoundly glad at the same time that no one could see her like this. But even if Severus himself had been standing by her side, she couldn't have helped it, couldn't have suppressed the fear that, for the first time in her life, turned Jane into an utterly normal little house elf.

"ELF," Malfoy roared and after the endless moment it took her brain to understand, send a command to her legs and then made them obey with threats of blood deprivation, Jane stumbled to her feet.

The way to Hermione's room longer than ever before. When she passed the doorway, shoulders hunched in instinctive safeguard from what awaited her on the other side, she saw Malfoy, standing in the middle of the room, his face white with rage.

And she had the feeling that for the first time she had ever set eyes on him, she saw the real Malfoy.

The thing that hid beneath the masks and gloves and robes of silk.

In his arms, he cradled the limp body of Hermione.

She shuddered.

"What happened here, elf?" He roared, sounding only more dangerous from closer up. "Did you touch her? Did you do anything to her?"

"Jinny was a good house elf, Master Malfoy," Jane replied hastily, eyes averted. "Jinny cleans and takes care and never even looks at the mudblood…"

"DON'T call her that," Malfoy roared, and even through the anger Jane could hear honest distress. She looked up in astonishment, only to see Malfoy, controlled, icy Malfoy bury his perfect face in the matted hair of Hermione Granger.

"She was so much more than that," He whispered, and for a moment Jane wondered if she had gone mad. "And she was MINE!"

"I is sorry Master Malfoy," Jinny squeaked, only to be interrupted by a hiss of pure anger. She hunched lower.

"This wasn't supposed to happen," He hissed, his eyes still on Hermione's face. One of his perfectly manicured hands reached out and softly, tenderly touched the bow of her lower lip, teasingly. "I didn't allow you to leave. You are mine."

Jane felt bile rise inside her throat and she averted her eyes, glad that Malfoy paid no attention to her at all. She had seen Severus touch Hermione's mouth like that, with as much tenderness and reverence that bordered on awe. To see the same expression on Malfoy's face, who had made her scream and beg, who had broken her like a cheap toy and thought that healing her afterwards was 'taking care' made her want to scream.

Instead, she looked away, waiting for the painful silence to end.

"Elf," Malfoy repeated finally, and when she looked up at him, she could see that the Death Eater was back. And yet his eyes were red rimmed, as if he had rubbed them, and his hands were tender when he laid her down onto the bed.

One long, longing glance travelled over her body, touched all that he had defiled in the last months, then he turned away from the corpse of his precious possession and his shoulders straightened.

"There is a graveyard not far from here. Bury her."

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	70. De Profundis

**A/N:**Thank you all for your many reviews and 'welcome back's! I hope you like this chapter, as it brings you something you have been waiting for quite a long time now…

I also wanted to inform you that the long-awaited Harry-Draco-slash-one-shot is online and to be accessed via my profile now. It's called ‚The Happy Prince' and those of you who voted for a Harry-Draco should definitely go and read it. For all the other readers: The one shot will in no way influence the main story. You don't have to read it, and there will be no slash popping up in this story. If you are interested, I might write another one shot, though (hint).

Oh, and one other thing: I am searching for a beta for this story, to help me revise and correct it. What I especially need is someone with excellent abilities in grammar and spelling (as you probably noticed). If you're interested, please send me a note and we can discuss details.

Now read and have fun!

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**De Profundis**

Harry was dreaming, a quite pleasant dream involving himself, Draco and the giant squid sitting in a boat in the middle of the great lake, drinking tea and eating petit fours, when suddenly a knocking sound disturbed their polite discussion about Quidditch tactics. 

He frowned, bent forward so that his ear rested close to the wood of the boat, and waited. There it was again. Harry wondered if it was one of the merpeople requesting to be part of their little get together, but when the knocking continued, becoming even more insistent than before, he decided that he had to be wrong. Merpeople had never seemed the knocking type to him. 

"Harry Potter, wake up and open that bloody door or I will rip it down!"

A voice now shouted, and Harry looked around him in search for a door, now earnestly confused. 

Then, he woke up. He stumbled towards the door to his room, then stumbled back in search for trousers, then stumbled forwards again and very nearly hit his head on the door knob. 

Carefully, he opened the door and saw a dark, small blob before him. This made him realize that he had forgotten to put on his glasses, and so he stumbled back and retrieved them from the night table. On his journey back to the door, he found that he was nearly awake enough now to walk normally. 

He noticed two things immediately. The blob on his doorstep could with the help of his glasses be identified as Jane, Severus' house elf. This confused him because he had heard that she had vanished, and also because he couldn't quite imagine why she would be pounding on his door at – and this was the second thing he noticed – what appeared to be the middle of the night. 

"Yes," He finally managed after an awkward pause. Not the most eloquent greeting, but then he had only had two hours' sleep where he would have needed twelve, a thing that had nearly become normal by now. The day never seemed to have enough hours to get everything done.

Jane didn't smile, despite his Chaplin-worthy slapstick activities. She just cocked an eyebrow, as if waiting for his brain to wake up. 

"Come with me," She then said. "We haven't got much time."

"Wha…" Harry mumbled, wondering if he had missed something. 

"Considering the state Severus is in at the moment, he probably wouldn't let me go, at least not without a lot of fuss," Jane continued, as if anything of what she was saying made any sense. "Therefore, you will have to do. Call that Healer that is in the Order, I believe Jones is her name. And get Severus, but try to break it gently to him, will you?"

"Wha…" Harry began again, finally awake enough to step into the conversation it seemed they were having. But before he could finish the question, they had reached the Headquarters' main room. 

And there, lying on the sofa, was…

"Hermione?" He whispered, not believing what he saw. He actually reached out to pinch himself, but Jane slapped his hand away with a mixture of amusement and irritation. 

"Yes, Hermione," She answered dryly. "I did a bit of spying myself and rescued her. Now listen closely, Potter: Lucius Malfoy, and soon every other Death Eater, will believe her dead. I infiltrated his mansion as a house elf, gave her the Draught of Living Death and let him find her. That is why I will have to go back in a minute, to keep him from developing any suspicion. Can you remember that?"

Slowly, as if in a dream, Harry nodded. 

He still couldn't believe Hermione was on that sofa. 

"She's alive?" He asked, still whispering. His right hand twitched, as if he wanted to touch her and prove she was real, but it fell back to his side limply. 

"Yes," Jane answered with growing impatience. "And she will stay so if you alert that Healer of yours. At the moment, she's in a magical stasis, but she will have to be treated soon."

"She's all dirty," Harry said. Somewhere inside he knew that he was in shock, that the cold, hard feeling in his stomach that kept him from concentrating on anything but the leaves and filth covering Hermione's body wasn't normal, but it seemed so incredibly important that she became clean again, much more important than the simple fact of her presence. 

"I had to bury her first," Jane explained, making no sense at all. Then, her prim and impatient face softened a bit and she touched his shoulder with an understanding hand. 

"She_is_ alive, Harry," She whispered softly. "And although I can't promise anything about her mental state, I _can_ promise that she won't go away again."

This time, he did reach out and touch her face, softly, not quite knowing what to expect. Her skin was icy cold and she didn't react when skin met skin, but she was reassuringly solid. 

Slowly, he felt the cold knot in his stomach fade and make place for something else, a disbelieving joy that filled every part of him. He wanted to skip up and down, he wanted to sing and dance. He wanted to fall into the deep, undisturbed sleep he had lacked ever since she left. 

Hermione was alive!

"Now, I have to go back and clean that marble madhouse for a few days, otherwise Malfoy might become suspicious. Give this to the healer once you have contacted her, but don't worry, Hermione is in no acute danger."

From the folds of her white towel, she removed a small scroll of parchment, filled with a spiky handwriting that reminded Harry of Severus'. 

Harry nodded. "Thank you," He whispered, carefully putting the scroll down on the table by Hermione's side. 

"You're welcome," Jane said crisply. "Although I can't say it was a pleasure. And tell Severus not to worry. I have the act down as if I were a real house elf," She smiled dryly, then once more nodded towards the fireplace to remind him of the Healer, raised her hand in a silent greeting, and apparated away. 

Harry took a long breath. 

_Don't collapse now,_ He told himself sternly while walking towards the fireplace on wobbly knees. _You have things to do_.

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His pounding against the magical tapestry was undignified, and when Severus opened after an eternal moment of waiting, his raised eyebrows made clear how Harry had to appear to him – his face flushed, his hair in disarray, his eyes wild with shock and surprise.

Harry didn't care. Not one bit. 

"Severus," He shouted, but it came out as a breathless whisper, "Severus… she's alive! Jane came back and told us… she infiltrated that unplottable mansion and posed as house elf… I mean she is a house elf, of course, but…"

"What on earth are you babbling about, Potter," Severus snarled, irritation for once giving his words colour, "Do try to make sense for once!"

Harry took a deep breath, steadied his shoulders, and searched for sensible words in the chaotic whirlwind that had blown his ratio to pieces. Finally, he found them. 

"Hermione," He said, and saw Severus pale, "She's back! Jane rescued her from Malfoy. And… she's alive!

Without any of his usual grace and decorum, Severus shoved him to the side and stormed into headquarters, his wrinkled robes billowing in true Spymaster-fashion. 

But the wideness of his eyes when he turned around to Harry, having found no sign of Hermione, belied the impression of self control. 

"Where is she?" He hissed, and Harry silently pointed upwards, to the stairs that led to several private rooms, his among them. And the one they had originally intended for Hermione's use.

Severus rushed up the stairs, taking two steps at a time. The door burst open before he reached it as his magic escaped his usually so impeccable self control. 

Harry reached the door a second behind him and saw that Severus' hadn't come much farther, had only moved into the room one step or two. 

He was staring at the sight in front of him, Hestia Jones, bustling through the room and transforming it into a hospital ward, the four poster bed with the hangings Hermione had picked before she had vanished, and Hermione herself, lying in the middle of the white linen like a small boat lost in the ocean, nearly as pale as the cloth surrounding her. 

For a second or two, Harry thought that Severus would break down and cry. He blinked rapidly, and one hand rose blindly to his face, as if to rub his eyes. His face wavered and changed in a way Harry couldn't quite make out and his lips thinned. His body sagged and he looked as if he would stumble any moment. 

Harry had actually reached out to steady him when Severus caught himself and suddenly stood straighter, his eyes still riveted on Hermione.

He drank in the scene like a man dieing of thirst, drank and drank, and while he took in every detail, his eyes moving slowly from Hermione's hair to her eyes to her nose and lips, down to her hands and her whole, all too slim form, not even moving towards her but still looking as if he had just been handed the greatest gift in the world, as Harry watched him watching her and drawing strength purely from her presence, Harry found that he was crying silently from the sheer relief of it. 

Slowly, Severus' hands relaxed from the fists they seemed to have been curled into for weeks. The dull black of his eyes regained colour and richness. 

Hermione was back, Harry finally realized in this moment of silence that seemed to reorder time to a place he had believed long lost. 

Hermione was back. And so, it seemed, was Severus. 

When Severus stepped forwards to the bed, it was with measured, controlled steps, and he didn't gather her in his arms the way Harry had done after Hestia Jones had proclaimed it safe. He didn't smile or speak. But the tenderness with which he reached out and touched her pale cheek with the back of his right hand, just for a moment and so soft that it had to seem like a breath of air to her, this single touch proclaimed to all in the world that had eyes to see just how much this – she – meant to him. 

"How is she?" Their Spymaster now asked, and although his voice was still hoarse and rusty, it was his again and Harry saw Hestia Jones look up in surprise. 

"I don't know yet, not exactly at least," She replied after a moment. "She is malnourished of course, and has been abused extensively, although it appears that the worst injuries have been healed shortly after they were inflicted, which hopefully means that she won't retain any long term damage. But I can't tell you anything about her mental state before she has regained consciousness. At the moment, she is still under the stasis induced by the Draught of Living Death, and I would advice to keep her under it at least until the last of her physical injuries are …"

"Wake her up," Severus interrupted. "Now."

Hestia Jones blanched. "But… Professor Snape," She protested. She had never been on a first name basis with Severus, and to call him Mr had always seemed like an impossibility. "It would be extremely unwise to wake her before we have completed…"

"I said wake her," Severus repeated firmly. 

"But…"

"I could do it myself, you know," He said quietly, almost conversationally. "I _am_a Potions Master."

Harry took a deep breath. He wasn't sure what was going on, and something told him that it might be better to alert Albus Dumbledore to the situation, but he _knew_ that tone. Severus only used it when he was in control, when he knew something vital the others did not, or when something was of urgent necessity. 

If he had trust in anything, it was Severus' judgement. Even during the past weeks, with them all half mad with grief, Severus had never wavered in his evaluation of their situation, and he had never been wrong. 

"Do it," Harry said just as quietly. "He has his reasons."

_Or at least I hope so_, He added silently when Severus didn't react to his words, didn't even bother to turn towards him. But he had always been this way when Hermione was in danger or hurting, concentrating only on her, noticing nothing else around him. Harry remembered how he had thrown Remus into a wall once when he had tried to interfere, and decided that being ignored wasn't the worst that could happen. 

"I think we should at least inform Albus," Hestia Jones obviously seemed determined to defend the perceived needs of her patient. 

"Do it." As often as he had acted out the leader over the past weeks, Harry was still surprised when his commands were taken at face value. He half expected her to argue on, but instead, Hestia Jones took one more look at Severus' face, then at Harry's and nodded, walking over to a small table she had already filled with potions and selecting one. 

"It should take her a few minutes to wake," She said softly and opened Hermione's mouth, carefully tipping the flask so that ran down her patient's throat into a soft trickle while the other hand performed a spell to make Hermione swallow. 

"But I don't know how much she will be able to grasp from her surroundings. After the things she went through…"

"We know perfectly well what happened to her," Harry interrupted, surprised how controlled his own voice sounded, how much like Dumbledore's. "Thank you, Ms Jones."

The Healer huffed, shook her head in demonstrative annoyance, and returned to her diagnosis charms. 

For a few minutes, nothing at all happened. Silently, Severus moved away from the bed until he stood in the shadows of its hangings, invisible to everyone who didn't scan the room closely. Harry wondered why for a moment, since he would have thought Severus would want to be close to Hermione when she awoke, but the excitement and worry he felt made it impossible to concentrate on the thought for long. 

He was feeling a strange combination of dread and hope, a tension that made him want to balance on his toes or jump up and down. He hadn't been this excited on his first real Christmas with the knowledge of presents waiting for him, nor this frightened ever since he had last confronted Voldemort in his fifth year. 

Would she wake up? Would she recognize him? Would she be able to talk to them? Or would she… But no, that wasn't a thought to dwell on for the moment. Hermione was strong, she would pull through this just as she had pulled through everything else life had thrown at her. He had seen her stand up and fight on as if nothing had happened at all only hours after she had nearly died. She would deal with this and move on, he was sure…

There was a sound, too quiet to be heard, and the tiny movement of lashes on skin, and then Hermione's eyes were open. 

Harry's breath caught as he stared at the friend he had believed lost forever, the friend that was now back with him, safely in her own bed and finally awake. 

His eyes darted to Severus, who remained hidden in the shadows, his face stony and unreadable, then back to the focus of all their attention. 

"Hermione?" He whispered, feeling stupid and clumsy and insecure of what to do. "Can you hear me?"

There was no reaction. She didn't even blink, and her eyes, staring unseeingly at the canopy of her bed, did not even flicker to his position. 

"Hermione?"

Nothing. And in the silence that invaded the room and took them all hostage, the terrible dread in Harry rose and rose, surpassing all other emotions. 

"Miss Granger," Hestia Jones tried to reach her now. "You are back at Hogwarts, safe and sound. I have healed your worst injuries and am confident that you can recover completely. Do you know who we are?"

Nothing. And Harry wanted to scream as his hopes turned into ash and were scattered through the room. This couldn't be happening. This silent, waxen corpse couldn't be his fierce, beautiful friend. She couldn't be lost. Not like this. Not when they had just found her again. 

"Hermione," He whispered, slowly walking towards the bed and making sure that he crossed her line of vision before he lowered himself to perch on the side of the mattress. "It's me, Harry. Can you hear me? If you can hear me, give me a sign, please."

Slowly, he reached out to touch her arm, to show that he was by her side, and because he didn't know what else to do in the face of this catatonic Hermione. Her skin felt cold and dry to the touch, so very different to the soft, healthy feeling he remembered, and he made a soft sound of sorrow that broke off abruptly when he felt her muscles move under his hand. 

Had she twitched? Had her eyes turned towards him?

Then, faster than he had expected, faster than he could have imagined, the reaction came. 

But it was not the one he had been hoping for. 

Her eyes suddenly widening and her face twisting in a grimace of horror, Hermione screamed, the high pitched, desperate scream of an animal in pain. 

She scuttled away from his hand as if it had burned her, and when reaching the edge of the bed, threw herself over it and to the floor. Her panicked flight, half crawling, half running, continued till she reached one corner of the room, where she curled up in a small ball, the tearing sounds of fear and pain still breaking free of her throat. 

"Hermione!" Harry was shocked enough to forget all caution, and only Hestia Jones' firm hand stopped him from rushing after her. "It's me! Harry! There's no need to be afraid!"

Hermione only whimpered and hid her face behind a curtain of dirty locks. Slowly, he crawled towards her, hunched low so that she wouldn't perceive him as a threat. 

_I treat her like an animal_, He thought, horrified of what the situation had turned into. _She's the most brilliant witch I know, and I'm treating her like a hurt dog!_

But the way she lashed out at him violently, the way she screamed when he came too close, piercing and high and much too loud, didn't reveal even a spark of her intelligence or self control. 

After a few minutes of panic and screams that tore at his insides, Harry gave up trying to approach her. He settled down on his knees and try to calm her with his voice, telling stories of their time together and repeating the names of those she loved and cherished. 

Nothing helped. Nothing provoked a reaction other than fear or violence. And as Harry sat in front of her, telling stories about trolls in bathrooms and a three headed dog, the last vestiges of hope vanished from his hollow chest. 

She didn't behave like a human anymore. She didn't even behave as if she _remembered_ she had been human, capable of speech and magic. All she could do was defend herself in the most primal of ways, imprisoned in a fear that seemed eternal, far out of their reach.

They tried everything over the next hour. Harry had left the room for a short time to alert the others to Hermione's return, but neither Dumbledore nor Draco could provoke a reaction other than the wild panic Hermione displayed.

She would whimper to herself like an animal in pain. Efforts to approach her would only lead to the frightened cries that seemed her only means of communication, or, in Draco's case, a very low, threatening growl that didn't seem to come from a human throat. 

By the end of the hour, both Harry and Draco were near tears, and Severus still hadn't moved from his place in the shadows, as if all this had nothing to do with him at all. 

"It's no use, Mr Potter," Hestia Jones finally told him. "She won't recognize you. I'm afraid she won't recognize anybody at the moment."

"What does that mean?" Harry cried out, but it was Severus that answered his question. Finally moving away from the wall, he stepped towards Hermione, cold, unreadable eyes sweeping over her body and twisted face once before he turned away and met Harry's desperate eyes.

"Just what I expected," He said expressionlessly. "There's nothing left of her mind." 

And he turned on his heel and left the room without once looking back.

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"What do you mean, nothing left of her mind?" Harry demanded, half angry, half desperate, when he managed to corner the Spymaster five hours later. 

Severus barely looked up from the cauldron in front of him, his hands moving the stirring rod in an intricate dance and his face smoothed into the stone like mask he always wore when he concentrated.

"How can you say that about her? We have no idea what she suffered during the last months. Perhaps she only needs time, or…"

"This is not about her mental state, Harry," Severus snapped, his eyes finally leaving the cauldron. "And I would appreciate it if you left me to my work. It is more important than the teary babbling of our Boy Wonder."

A few months ago, the comment would have stung and caused Harry to turn away in anger. But they hadn't been through all this together, then. He hadn't seen Severus stand helpless in the middle of Headquarters like a lost child. He hadn't helped send his best friend to death.

"Oh no, you don't," He growled. "I want to know what you're talking about, and I want you to explain it in as much detail as is necessary. Otherwise I will bring the whole Order up here and let Molly Weasley torture it out of you."

Severus glared at him the way he hadn't done for nearly a year. He opened his mouth, probably to embark on a string of most creative insults, but Harry only raised one eyebrow in silent challenge, and Severus' mouth closed with a click. 

Too late did Harry remember where he had copied that expression. It had been Hermione's way of telling Severus quietly how stupidly he behaved.

"I need to stir this for five more minutes," Severus finally announced flatly. "And I need to concentrate."

Harry nodded, accepting the Spymaster's words as a compromise, and moved to the back of the lab, careful not to touch anything.

Only now that he was reduced to watching silently did he really notice the changes in Severus. While his back was still stiff as a stick and his shoulders tense in a way that had to cause him perpetual headaches, while his face was still wearing the forbidding expression second nature to him these days, there was something different in the way he held himself, something new – or rather old – in the way he moved. 

_He's looking alive again,_ Harry noticed with a start, and that thought gave him the strength to remain quiet for the eternity that were five minutes' stirring. 

"Rest for 20 hours now," Severus finally announced and Harry sprung to his feet. Still they remained silent until they had descended to the library, where Severus poured both of them tea, with generous amounts of sugar in it. 

_So he runs on his last reserves as much as I do,_ Harry thought, remembering that Severus never took sugar in his tea, normally. _I wonder when he slept the last time._

"You remember the first Occlumency sessions we had together with Hermione," Severus began, phrasing his words not as a question, but as a simple statement. Harry nodded nonetheless. 

"In order to simplify visualisation techniques for you, Hermione showed you her mind, including her several security-levels." 

Another statement from Severus, another nod from Harry. 

"Do you recall the trapdoor she showed you?"

Harry frowned. "Yes," He answered slowly. "I think I do. It was below the main hall of her memory palace. She called it her 'last retreat' or something like that, I think."

This time, the nod came from Severus. "And that's exactly what it is. A place where nothing from the outside can reach her, once the door is sealed from the inside. You see, every spy prepares for the possibility of being caught alive." He swallowed, and his face became stone for the blink of an eye. 

"Hermione couldn't use the triggered Obliviate that protects your secrets for obvious reasons," He then continued. "And as well fortified as her mind was, she always knew that she wouldn't be able to withstand a combination of mental and physical attacks for too long a time."

He swallowed again and reached for his cup of tea with a hand as steady as a rock. "No one could. That's why she trained herself in the ability of destroying her own mind."

Harry's hands trembled, and tea spilled onto his fingers, burning them slightly. Somehow, the sensation of heat anchored him to the real world, keeping a safe distance between himself and the concept of destroying a piece of art like Hermione's mind. 

"So that's what you meant when you said there's nothing left of her. She… destroyed herself? Completely?"

"No. Not completely," Severus said, grim satisfaction in his voice. "Or at least that's what I hope for. The process I am talking about destroys everything you have seen inside her mind, the fortifications, the gardens, the house. But a spark of her being, a mere figment of the person that is Hermione, should be hidden away safely behind the trapdoor. _If_she had the time to do this the right way, that is."

"But she has seen us and we talked to her," Harry protested. "Wouldn't she come out if there was anything left?"

"No, she wouldn't. Because she _cannot_ come out. This decision, once made, is irreversible. Once sealed, the trapdoor cannot be traced and found from the outside, but it cannot be opened from the inside, either. And even if it could, there wouldn't be a place for her to return to. The rest of her mind is gone. Hermione, apart from that little rest of her hidden away, is less than an animal, reacting on pure instincts, unable to regain whatever memories, abilities or emotions she had, because even that could endanger her mission. Usually, spies prefer to kill themselves over this solution, but that possibility probably wasn't open to her, for which I'm endlessly grateful."

"You are grateful?" Harry whispered, not sure how to phrase the thoughts that whirled through her mind. "But what… I mean… If she's nothing more than what we have seen in the infirmary, wouldn't it be better if…" He couldn't bring himself to utter the cliché of death being a blessing, but Severus' expression told him that he had understood. 

Their Spymaster didn't answer for a long time, his thumbs silently tracing the pattern on his cup and his eyes lost in unknown distances. 

"Normally, it would," He then said, absolutely expressionless. "But normally, no one would have developed a potion that could reverse the process."

Tea left a dark trace on the table as Harry put down his cup forcefully. He didn't care. 

"You can bring her back?" He whispered, then, as the realization of what Severus had said fully entered his mind. "Then why didn't you say so at once? There are people mourning for her, even now, and you sit here over tea and tell no one?"

Severus sighed, closed his eyes for a moment and pinched the bridge of his nose. He looked exhausted to the bone. 

"I don't know," He, too, was whispering. "I _hope_ I can bring her back, but the potion is experimental, and it has never been done before. Even if I can unseal her trap door, we can't be sure that she will ever regain her personality completely. It_should_ be possible, but the chances are just as great that I will make things worse."

Harry made a bitter sound in the back of his throat. "How could it become worse?" he asked, remembering the wild thing trapped in the body of his friend, mad with fear and pain.

"She could die," Severus answered bluntly, his eyes sinking into the content of his tea cup. "Or she could regain what she once had, but only a tiny part, not enough to once again control her body and mind, but enough to know what was done to her, or what she has lost."

Carefully, he put the cup down and looked up at Harry, their eyes meeting. A shudder ran down Harry's spine as he looked into those black pools, for once not veiled and hidden behind a myriad of masks, but open and true in a terribly way. 

"Right now she is unconscious. The part of her that is Hermione doesn't feel any pain, it doesn't know any sorrow," Severus whispered, his pain too raw to be conveyed by words, and Harry wanted to weep at what he saw in his eyes, to lend his own tears to a soul that was too far gone for sorrow of that kind. "And I don't know if I have the right to take that one consolation from her. I don't know if I have the right."

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**A/N**: And you thought the time for cliffhangers was finally over ;-)…

Review, please!


	71. Death, Be Not Proud

**A/N**: Thank you for all your reviews! This one took me a bit longer than planned, but I wanted to make sure that I got it right. I hope for another update next week and an update of 'Had I Known' as well.

Any questions, comments or criticism will be answered in my lifejournal. And thanks to all of you who offered to beta. I'm very busy at the moment, but as soon as there's some time left for it, I will make sure to get back to you all!

Oh, and one other thing. Some of you complained now and then that the chapters were ‚too short' (and you will probably say that about this one, too). I can only say that, while I try to keep the chapters between ten and fifteen pages, the story dictates their length. If a scene wants to end at a particular point, it would be a terrible idea to add or change something. So you will have to live with the length of my chapters, I'm afraid ;-)

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**Death, Be Not Proud**

At least she wasn't suffering anymore.

These were the words that Severus had repeated to himself time and again during that terrible hour in her sick room, had hammered into his mind until even his heart understood them.

Whatever happened, at least she wasn't suffering anymore. And even though this body, this mere shell, had little in common with the Hermione he loved and whose absence tore at him every single second, at least he had this now, could touch her, see her.

He could protect her from further harm. He could keep Lucius Malfoy away from her.

He had known that something was wrong the moment he had seen her, had known it even before he touched her face, before he saw her eyes open. There had been something missing…a spark perhaps, that flame that made her unique.

He had had to be sure, of course, that was why he had demanded from the Healer to wake her up, but all he had seen, all he had watched from his place in the shadows had just confirmed his initial belief.

This… this crawling, screaming, whimpering _thing_ wasn't his Hermione. It was empty, like an uninhabited house, stripped of everything that made it worth living in. It was no business of his.

And still… still his whole being had longed for her touch, his hands and arms had hurt with the desperate wish to take her and hold her, to make the pain go away, and his chest had ached at the sight of those beautiful eyes, that beautiful hair, those lips… but this wasn't his Hermione.

_You are a scientist_, he had told himself firmly. _This is a case, not the love of your life, an interesting case that you must study carefully._

But all he had wanted to do was gather her in his arms and take her back into his chambers, where she belonged, was to bolt from the room and flee the presence of this shell that reminded him of so much…

He had been strong. A good scientist. A Spymaster. And he had kept the thoughts and emotions at bay until he had returned to his chambers, where no one could hear him.

And set to work.

He had retrieved his notes on the experimental potion, those thoughts he had first begun to collect when Voldemort had returned to his body three years ago, back then because he had expected his own betrayal and torture. With time, he had stopped working on them, just as he had stopped working on so many other projects he hadn't found time and strength for.

Only Hermione entering his life had rekindled the need for the project. While he had accepted his own death or imprisonment in the dungeons of his mind years ago, the thought of Hermione hidden away under the trapdoor had pained him long before they had become friends or lovers.

These last weeks, he had spent every hour he could free on them, had poured his sleepless nights into the experiments and his restless days into research. He had brewed and tested and brewed again, and now it seemed that his work had been more than a vain effort to keep at least a figment of hope alive.

Now it seemed that it could save Hermione's life.

But there were also his doubts, doubts that had only increased with the progress of his potion, that had reared their ugly head and been fed by the discussion with Harry.

At least she didn't suffer anymore. He couldn't bear to change that, to take this last solace away from him, from them all.

But could he live with the knowledge that there was a chance in his grasp, a hope for recovery that he had discarded before trying? Could he go on knowing that her body was curled in on itself in this cold bed, her soul and spark cowering in that hole she couldn't find out of on her own?

Could he leave her there, in the darkness, waiting for her flesh to die, just because he had been afraid to risk something?

The others thought he should treat her. In fact, they seemed unable to see the problem. In typical Gryffindor manner, they saw a way open before them and charged ahead.

But they only considered what _they_ wanted, what _they_ needed. Severus however, despite his own wishes and fears, was concerned with a thing much more difficult.

What would _she_ want?

She had wished for peace. For silence and tranquillity, for time to rest her body and mind and to explore life's possibilities.

How could he hope to give her that?

Abruptly, Severus shook himself free from these brooding thoughts. He was pathetic!

Here he was, hiding in his room and hovering over a finished potion that he couldn't bring himself to use, when Hermione was lying just a few steps away from him.

He muttered a curse, whirled around and was down the steps and through the magical tapestry before he had time to wonder and worry anymore.

Headquarters were dark, and in Hermione's room only a magical candle was burning by her bedside. Severus closed the door to Harry's room, opposite to Hermione's, careful not to wake him. Obviously the Boy Wonder had left it open to keep an eye on his friend, but the sound of his snoring made it unlikely that he would notice anything of lesser scope than an earthquake.

He closed Hermione's door behind him, too, and stood silent for a moment, just as he had done this morning. Hermione was sleeping again; after their fruitless efforts to reach her, Healer Jones had induced a magical coma that would help heal her injuries and allow her to regain her strength. She had uttered the hope that it would also give her back some of the memories and mental abilities she had lost, but Severus knew that this was a foolish hope. He had, after all, studied the process she had undergone closely, more closely than any other member of the Order.

He chuckled, a dry, dying sound in the darkness. And once again his past made him a co-conspirator to Hermione's action, and their common enemy made him the only one who could possibly understand, who could hope to make a difference.

She looked peaceful as she lay there, clad in white pyjamas and covered with a red blanket – Severus remembered it from her Head Girl room -, but even with her face soothed by sleep and her eyes closed, Severus saw that something was missing, something that had made her alive before. The Hermione he had known had always been thinking, even in her sleep.

A chair was positioned by the side of the bed. It seemed that someone had sat with her – probably Harry, since Draco still hadn't dealt with his guilt and pain.

He sat down and took her hand, his thumb automatically rubbing her palm in the soothing way she had liked so much. Perhaps he could finally find some rest here, in her dark, silent room, by her side, some rest and the answers he was so desperately searching for.

He missed their talks. He missed how she had always cut straight to the heart of the matter, how she had understood him better than he himself could.

He missed someone who shared his memories and his past. He missed her as a lover, as someone who held him close and kissed him, but he missed more than that.

He missed her as a partner, as someone he could spar with, both verbally and physically. He missed her as a part of himself that could read his thoughts and finish his sentences, that could add the little details that would make a plan unique.

He missed his best friend.

"Do you remember," He whispered into the darkness surrounding them, anchored safely by the feeling of her small hand in his. "How we first met? I couldn't stand you, you and your righteousness and your endless questions and those huge teeth?"

He laughed softly, still hard pressed to believe that his Hermione had once been that small, insecure terror.

"And do you remember," He continued, his face sobering and his voice turning breathless. "After I knew what you had done - those first weeks, when I hated you and you were so afraid, so alone… And still you never gave up. You fought me with your every breath, and you tricked your way out of everything I threw at you.

"And our truce… our pact," He said, pressing her hand for a moment, nearly able to imagine the answering pressure from her. "The little wall of books you built around your armchair. Your wariness and your independence…"

He laughed again, but it nearly turned to a sob as he remembered their Christmas together, how she had fallen asleep on his shoulder for the first time, and how that tiny thing that he would have dismissed as utterly unimportant a few months before had suddenly mattered so much to him.

"Do you remember how we planned and fought? How we got rid of MacNair and manipulated Dougall's mind together? We fought everything that stepped into our way, even the Order."

He smiled again. "And we won. Every time. Don't change that, Hermione. Don't ever change that."

As he sat by the side of her lifeless body, the tattered cloak her soul had abandoned, he saw her face again, dancing in the darkness, alive and ablaze with pleasure as she fought with him, as she stepped into his arms and let him hold her, as she laughed over his jokes or argued fiercely with him, not willing to give an inch of ground when she thought he was right.

"I can't do this without you," He confessed into the darkness, stroking her hand with his thumb. "I don't know how. You've taught me so much more than I could ever have taught you. But it's all worthless now. This victory won't mean a thing without you."

Her warmth on his skin, her breath in his ears, and suddenly he realized that he had asked the wrong question all along.

This wasn't about the war and Hermione's necessity for it to succeed. It wasn't about her friends and their hope, or the bright future she had ahead of her in the wizarding world.

It wasn't even about her needs and wishes, and what she would have wanted for herself, although he couldn't forget that for a second.

If he was brutally honest with himself, honest as he could only be here, alone with her in the darkness, it was about him and him alone.

For the first time in his life, there was something he wanted, something he needed as dearly as breath itself.

He wanted Hermione. He needed Hermione.

And although he had denied himself pleasure and joy and love for longer than she had lived, although he had thought himself used to this half existence in the shadows, he didn't want it anymore.

He wanted her. He wanted a life with her.

"_You have told me once that your life belonged to me," _The words of her letter to him ghosted through his mind_. "I am claiming it now. Live it."_

But he couldn't live it without her. And perhaps, when everything else was stripped away from him, when there was only his heart and the darkness, the thing that was left would be his Slytherin selfishness and his love for her, and the knowledge that she wouldn't want him to end his life.

She had been willing to die for him to end his suffering, and back then he hadn't wanted her sacrifice. But this time, he thought in the darkness, this time he wanted it, this time he needed it. This time he would ask for her sacrifice. This time she would have to live to end his suffering.

"Do you remember, Hermione", he whispered, tears burning his eyes and his throat, "What I told you one night? How we will sleep together in peace and safety, and listen to the birds greeting the morning? How there will be nothing we'll have to hide from, no pain, no fear, no war to stand between us? It can still happen, Hermione. It can still become true. All you have to do is fight this, and be strong for me, and wake up."

Slowly, he leaned down and placed a kiss on her forehead. She tasted just as he remembered it, sweet and spicy and of peaceful sleep, and he closed his eyes for a moment, allowing himself the luxury of imagining that all was well.

"Don't leave me. And I hope you will forgive me for what I am about to do."

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Severus' owl found Harry at the breakfast table, where he stared into his porridge with less than enthusiasm.

It was all incredibly frustrating. She was back and alive, something he had never dared hope for, and yet she wasn't _truly_ back, and Severus was still unhappy, and Draco was berating himself in the dungeons.

But the note made his frustration evaporate and left only breathless excitement behind.

_I have decided to take the risk_, it said in the Spymaster's spiky handwriting. _Gather Albus and Draco and meet me in her room in ten minutes._

Harry raced through the corridors of Hogwarts, glad that there were no first years present that he could collide with.

He stormed Draco's rooms and together they flooed up to the Headmaster's office. Less than ten minutes had passed when together they reached Hermione's room, but Severus' was there already, standing at a small table on which a cauldron sat, slowly heating the potion that would decide Hermione's future.

Yet again, the Spymaster looked different than he had the night before, as if he had completed another step in the slow process of returning to his former self. Harry wondered what had made him decide to risk it, and remembered that the door to Hermione's room, which he had left open last night, had been closed this morning.

Severus looked up from the potion, then, and although his face didn't change when he looked at Hermione, Harry imagined that he saw a slight softening in his black eyes.

"The potion is ready," He said quietly.

Silently, they gathered around the bed while Severus bottled the potion.

"Don't come too close," He warned, the tension he must feel totally absent from his voice. "She might wake, and if she sees herself crowded, she might panic again."

Carefully, he brought the vial to her lips and tipped the content into her mouth. Hestia Jones made her swallow with a spell and then the dark green liquid was gone.

"Do not disturb me during the next minutes, whatever may happen," Severus whispered, his eyes fixed on her face as if it was the only thing in the world.

Harry could see that his jaw was clenched and his lips thin with concentration, but his breath was long and even and his hands were steady as they cupped her face and fixed it in position.

"Any moment now," He whispered as if to himself, but despite this warning Harry nearly jumped when Hermione's eyes opened, her pupils so wide that they appeared black.

She whimpered, a reaction to the sudden shock of being touched, and her arms thrashed against the covers of the bed. Still, Severus held her face fixed in his strong grip and bowed even lower until his nose nearly touched hers.

Then, all expression left his face and his lips relaxed. Hermione ceased to fight against this closeness and her mouth opened in a soft, silent sound.

An expression like pain crossed Severus' face for a moment, and Harry wondered what he was seeing. Severus had been much more at home in Hermione's mind-landscape than Harry, but even to him the thought of seeing that perfect garden, those beautiful buildings destroyed was painful. He wondered if there would be anything left to show what had happened, ruins or dead hedges, or if Hermione had erected buildings of madness instead, to fool any Legilimens that would enter her mind.

Harry remembered what Severus had told him about this process he had developed to help Hermione, and as he remembered, he tried to imagine what Severus was doing, how he was skilfully manipulating the mechanisms of her mind.

Although he had no idea how this might work, the potion would ease Severus' entrance into her mind and unseal the trapdoor. It would serve as a fertiliser to her mind, he had explained to Harry, encouraging the growth of new structures and the rebuilding of old ones, like hot water splashed on ice would help to melt it away and leave the ground bare and ready for planting.

But although the potion – if it worked correctly, and knowing Severus' abilities Harry had little doubt that it would – would take care of the safety precautions Hermione had taken, she still lacked the abilities and knowledge to regain what she had destroyed.

Perhaps she even lacked the courage to leave her hiding place, and it would be Severus' job to coax her out of it and to help her build the fundaments of her new mind.

Harry had asked how this would be any help in getting _their _Hermione back, since building a new mind wouldn't make her regain her memories or knowledge, but Severus had just replied that they had taken precautions and had then added, in a voice nearly back to his old self, that Harry wouldn't understand it anyway and shouldn't waste his time with questions.

So Harry hadn't asked anymore, reduced instead to hoping that Severus knew what he was doing.

As he was hoping now. Silently and fervently, with the old, powerful presence of Dumbledore to his left and Draco's warmth to his right. He shared a short glance with his friend and saw the same wishes and fears mirrored in his face.

Maybe everything would go right, but Harry had seen enough of their world to know that it was a feeble hope. And so he waited silently, and even the presence of his friends and comrades was no solace.

Finally, Severus straightened again, his face white and exhausted. His hands cupped her cheeks for a moment, as if he was unwilling to let her go, but then he sighed and turned away from her, towards Dumbledore, Harry and Draco

"The trapdoor is open and new fundaments for her mind are build," He said. "There is nothing more that I can do now inside her thoughts. This work lies with her."

"And now?" Harry asked his worried eyes fixed on Hermione's form, now stilled again in sleep.

"Now," Severus replied grimly, his eyes too resting on the woman he loved. "We read 'Hogwarts: A History' to her."

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It was night when she returned, tired and hurting all over. Lucius Malfoy had been a right bastard these past days, obviously more unsettled by Hermione's death than she had expected even after that strange scene she had been witness to.

He had found great satisfaction in kicking her around, and only house elf magic had saved her from breaking several bones.

All in all, she was more than glad that her short foray into the world of slavery was over. She had never been one for nostalgia, but this experience would certainly help her to remember just how disgusting her former life had been.

A snap of her fingers brought her back into Severus' chambers.

She wasn't surprised to see the changes there, but they told her everything she needed to know. Obviously, Hermione had survived and was on the path of recovery. And so was Severus.

The books and papers littering the library floor had been returned to their rightful places, and so had Hermione's desk and her favourite sofa. Jane couldn't help but smile when she saw the black tea pot, whole once more, sitting on the mantelpiece like a treasured family heirloom.

She took a deep breath, looked around her and nodded.

This was more like it.

Now to see what that fool in love had done to her kitchen.

She had bustled around for about an hour and re-organized their entire spice collection, glad that she was back home and back in control, when she heard movement in the next room. A snap of her finger reheated the tea she had already prepared, and when she entered the library, a tray floated after her.

"Severus," She greeted him in her crisp, curt teacher voice, and he whirled around, his robes billowing around him just like in the days before Hermione had vanished.

The room was in shadows, but she got a good sight of his face and smiled, even more satisfied.

"So she's better, then," She said, and he managed a nod, so insecure and shocked by her sudden appearance that she wanted to take him in her arms. Severus did not often lose his composure, he had been cold and controlled since earliest childhood, but when something truly overwhelmed him, he showed the helplessness and vulnerability of a toddler.

"Has she woken up already? Could you help her with her mental problems?"

He nodded again, obviously still speechless, and she turned around and deposited the tea things on the table, hiding her tender smile in the process. It wouldn't do to show him how adorable he was like this, and how entirely idiotic.

"Perhaps I should debrief," She then announced. "I must confess that I learned little of Lucius Malfoy's plans, since my main concern was to appear inconspicuous, but I know something of his daily routine and a few comments here and there that…"

She was silenced, abruptly, by male arms that enveloped her firmly and the strange sensation of a shaking wizard pressing her to his chest.

"You could have been killed, you stupid woman," Severus whispered fiercely, on his knees before her and still shaking like a house elf in front of his master. "He could have found you out!"

"Please, Severus," She admonished him, but somehow her voice didn't hold the sharpness only appropriate for such an outrageous claim. "Don't forget that _you_ learned from _me_."

"But you always refused to involve yourself in human affairs! You vowed never again to serve a wizard master," He whispered on while she noted with approval that he had showered and properly cleaned himself since she had last seen him.

"And why didn't you tell me what you planned before you went on that suicide mission! I thought I'd go mad when you vanished, too…"

"You were mad already, Severus," She interrupted him gently and stepped out of his fierce embrace. "And perhaps I was a bit, too – although we house elves are blessed with a degree of sanity that can be painful from time to time."

"But you could have…"

"She's family, Severus," She said. "You saved me for this reason, many years ago. She saved you, you saved her. It was time for me to close the circle."

She smiled and ruffled his hair, something she hadn't gotten the chance to do very often since he had first left for Hogwarts and returned the following summer, towering over her.

"And I was heartily sick of your gloominess. Your rooms were a mess, your brewing was awful, and I had gotten so used to these nice little dinners you had begun to give for friends. So be a good boy and don't blame me for being a selfish little woman and get our lioness back, will you?"

He opened his mouth as if to protest and begin another of his melodramatic litanies (a new habit; she would have to have words with Hermione about that once she recovered), but then his face softened and his eyes half closed in the way they always did when his mood was playful, and he rose to his feet, once more towering over her.

"Cunning old hag," He said, chuckled, and began to pour tea for them both.

She shook her head in tired disapproval.

"Unbearable, brooding bat," She retorted.

And thus they took their afternoon tea.

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**A/N:** The title of this chapter and the next is a quote from the sonnet 72 by John Donne. You can find the complete text at bartleby dot com!

Review, please!


	72. For Death, Thou Shalt Die

**A/N**: Apologies for the huge delay, dearest readers! If you want to know more about the reasons behind it, take a look at my livejournal. But it should suffice to say that, yes, there are good reasons behind it, and, no, I will never let any story of mine remain unfinished. I cherish your sympathies and reviews, all your reminders that you are thinking of me and liking this story. What I don't cherish however (and this concerns only a few reviews) is to have further pressure put on me. Believe me when I say that I take writing this seriously. If I do not update, you can be sure that there is a pretty good reason for it.

Thanks again for all your reviews, and I hope you will like this chapter!

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**For Death, Thou Shalt Die**

The most terrible thing about it all, Harry often thought as the days passed and Hermione gave no sign of waking, was the fact that the world kept on turning.

They could not stop the clocks, nor could they pause in their training, and although Harry could see the silent wish to rush to Hermione's bedside in more than one pair of eyes, the hours spent in the gym grew longer and longer.

The inner Inner circle, as Moody had once called them suspiciously, tended to migrate to Hermione's room and spend as much time there as possible. One could often find Severus situated in an armchair by the window, pouring over parchments and books, and Professors McGonagall and Dumbledore (Minerva and Albus, Harry, you are not a student any more) found pretexts to visit much more often than Hermione's unchanging condition made necessary, but Harry, Ron and the other former students had no such excuses, no work they could take with them to her sick room.

They spend their days sweating, cursing, ducking and evading under the strict tutelage of Remus and Moody, and only when they were so tired that they could barely drag their aching bodies from the gym they were allowed to leave.

But they were allowed to take turns. Every day at twelve o'clock, after a hasty midday meal, Harry would enter her room above the Headquarters and find her lying in a bed too large for her small frame, sometimes quietly, so still that he would hastily step forward out of fear that she had died since yesterday, sometimes moving slurringly, but always deeply asleep.

He would greet her then, reaching out to touch her hand or arm, softly and very carefully, for sometimes she would react badly to the touches, and tell her how he had spent the last day, what had happened during their training or whatever he could think of.

And then he would start reading to her, hour after hour, just as every other Order member did while guarding her bedside.

It wasn't just a sentimental exercise, Severus had told them after he had administered the potion and delved into her mind. Hermione had known that, should she ever be forced to destroy her mind palace, she wouldn't be able to take her memories and knowledge with her through the trapdoor. She had known that she would lose everything, and, being Hermione, she had planned carefully for that possibility.

There was a technique, Severus had told them, very old and invented by muggles, not wizards, that would allow someone experienced enough in the arts of the mind to tie knowledge to sequences of pictures, sounds or even text, just like memories were tied to rooms in the palace of the mind.

For her own memories, Hermione had chosen her favourite book, the one she had read more often than any other. She had spent days connecting knowledge, experiences and memories with the sentences and chapters in that guidebook of their childhood.

And so she had finally found a way to make Harry and Ron read "Hogwarts: A History". The thought made Harry want to cry.

While he read about the long chain of Headmasters and Headmistresses, the enchantments on the Great Hall or Hogwarts' destiny during the giant wars, he wondered what information he was feeding her, what awoke inside her mind, answering the call of these well known words and chapters.

Perhaps he was reading her childhood to her, he wondered as he read about the Sorting process. Or their friendship. Perhaps her NEWT Charms knowledge was hidden behind the dry words about greenhouse architecture. Perhaps her love for Severus crawled back into her mind through a lengthy description of the dungeons.

Whatever it was that he was giving her, he took great care to pronounce every word, leave out nothing, for he feared that her memories would remain incomplete if they skipped even one chapter, missed even one paragraph.

And still there was no promise that she would ever be the same again. There certainly was no notion of change, of awareness in this all too still body.

Harry sighed, turned a page and plunged back into the lengthy description of the water sewage and pipe system that some obviously demented headmaster from the 18th century had thought essential for the education of his readers. _Though this probably helped Hermione realize how the basilisk was moving through the school in second year_, Harry mused. _Still, it's dead boring_.

"In order to ensure the safe disposal of the seven types of water-waste, namely sanitary waste, potion-induced waste, cleaning waste, magical bubble-bath waste…" He read slowly and carefully while wondering if Hermione didn't usually skip passages like these when devouring her favourite book.

Again his eyes strayed to her face, and to the calendar that some well-meaning Order member had hung above her bedside table.

"The potion-effluence-system posed specific challenges insofar as this type of waste is not only magically active, but moreover often contains acidic substances that could damage and over longer periods actively destroy piping systems. After lengthy discussions, the board of governors therefore decided to install a pipe system that was coated with additional magical protections in order to insure…"

This calendar had probably been meant as an encouragement to all of them, as a sign that time was passing and things would be improving soon. Annoyingly bland pictures of sunny fields and green hills proclaimed to everyone who cared to see it that the English summer was still beautiful and everything was all right with the world.

To Harry, it was nothing but a reminder of those hellish Dursley-summers, when he had been sitting in his room from morning to night, waiting for something to change, for anything at all to happen, be it only the chance to cross off another day on his makeshift calendar. Just as he was waiting now. He remembered that these summers had seemed endless to him, and although he had known that they would finally give way to another year at Hogwarts, he had sometimes nearly lost hope. Just as he did now.

"The pipe system designed to deal with the effluent from magical bubble bath installations such as the Prefects' bathroom and the sanitary systems for teachers posed an entirely different set of problems. In the early days of the new system, house elves working in the kitchen reported a whole plethora of detrimental effects caused by the pipes running under their working places, some of which mounted to hallucinations or fits of euphoric mania. After a careful study of these effects, Potions Master Rider A. Slenderhorn proved that some of the bubble bath substances mimicked the effects of hallucinogenic drugs when breathed in by house elves, thus satisfyingly explaining the incident with seven elves dressed up as chickens that is still much discussed among the students and teachers…"

On this day of all days, the calendar was driving him mad. He wanted to rip it down and stamp on it until it released the time that had been frozen in this room. He wanted to…

Someone behind him cleared his throat and without thinking, Harry whirled around, wand in his hand, while 'Hogwarts: A History' hid the ground with a muffled thump.

"You seemed to have reached the end of the chapter," Draco commented quietly without taking his eyes off Hermione. "I think we should be leaving about now."

"Yes."

Even Harry could hear the lack of enthusiasm in his own voice, and he was the one doing the pretending.

Draco just smiled, a hesitant, knowing smile that told Harry that he understood him and shared his reservations.

"There's no way around it, I'm afraid," He said dryly, mock-shuddering a bit, but then his eyes slid back to the sleeping Hermione.

"There's time enough for you to sit with her for a while," Harry offered, knowing Draco's answer before his friend tore his eyes away from Hermione and shook his head.

"That wouldn't be a good idea," He refused quietly, and Harry knew that he was supposed to leave it at that. Still.

"I think it would."

Draco tried to scowl at him, but failed miserably at the look of sad understanding on his friend's face.

"Harry…I…"

"Look," Harry interrupted him, not wanting to hear the defeated tone or the quiet guilt in Draco's voice. "I understand how you feel. I've had my own experiences with guilt. But she's alive, and she's still your friend, and if she were awake, she'd be the first one to tell you that. So I think it's time to get over it and to take your part in this. She'll need you when she wakes up. _You_ need _her_. You've been a mess ever since you returned from your parents'."

Draco sighed, one hand rising to rub his eyes in a gesture that had become all too familiar over the last weeks, though it would have been unimaginable for the Malfoy heir to thus forget himself in public not long ago.

"I know that," He whispered. "But…"

"But what?" Harry asked, irritated now. "But you feel bad for what you did? I can't tell you how often I've thought that the world would stop because I messed up, that no one would ever like me again. But it's not like that, Draco. It's…"

"But I _tortured_ her," Draco interrupted fiercely. "And it is not just that I feel guilty, Harry. The thing I am afraid of, am _terrified_ of, is that when I enter this room and sit on her bed she will shy away from me. That she might wake up in my presence and scream and scream because she cannot see her friend anymore. Even if she could forgive for what I did, I look too much like my father. Like the man who did this to her."

He stopped, rubbing his eyes again, all determination gone from his voice.

"I couldn't bear that look on her face," He confessed quietly.

Harry shook his head, as if waking them both from a persistent nightmare.

"Hermione can distinguish between you and your father, Draco," He said, although he felt doubt nagging at his mind. Who knew what Hermione could or couldn't do now, after all. Perhaps she wouldn't remember any of them. Perhaps she wouldn't remember herself. "She always could."

Draco smiled, although his eyes held the same doubts Harry was trying to hide.

"I begin to see the charm of your Gryffindor way of thinking," He said dryly. "Optimists to the last, aren't you?"

And Harry smiled back, and touched his friend's shoulder in silent support, feeling the answering pressure as Draco leaned into his hand quietly for a moment.

But Draco didn't enter Hermione's room, and when Harry threw one last look at the calendar hanging innocently by her bedside, he wanted to hex the cursed thing into shreds. This was not how he had imagined this day, and still the black-on-white script refused to go away, the reminder of all that had gone wrong: July the 31st, and nothing was well.

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They had started celebrating Harry's birthday at the Burrow during that awful summer after Cedric Diggory had died and Voldemort had been resurrected. Originally, it had been planned as a consolation for Harry, as a reminder that there were still people caring for him no matter what the Ministry said or the future might hold, but to Remus it had long ago become more than anything else a loud 'Nevertheless', defiantly shouted into the faces of all those planning to destroy them.

Yes, there was a war on, he had thought every time they met and celebrated that Harry had survived yet another year, and yes, the future looked more than bleak, but still there were things to be happy about, and things to celebrate, and if they sacrificed these moments it would become just that much harder to remember what exactly they were fighting for.

Harry had opted for cancelling the party this year, arguing that it wouldn't be right to celebrate without Hermione, but Molly had insisted. Life went on, she had said with the wisdom of one who had survived the first war only to find her children involved in the second one, and Hermione would have been the first to remind Harry of that.

But still, Remus thought as he watched his honorary godson enter the Weasley's garden to shouts of welcome, still Harry didn't look too happy about it.

It was a beautiful, sunny summer day and the leaves of trees and bushes shone as if freshly polished, but Harry turned his attention to his feet instead of his surroundings, looking to all the world like an embarrassed teenager that couldn't quite deal with the attention.

It took Remus a second to realize that Harry was using this moment of seemingly being overwhelmed to surreptitiously check the wards that were anchored deeply in the grounds of the Burrow. The expertise with which Harry knew what to look for and his discretion only served to make Remus painfully aware of how much the boy had changed over the past year.

Why was it that despite all their efforts, all the birthday cake and good wishes in the world, Harry still had grown up much too soon, grown up to be a warrior?

Instead of waiting eagerly for his presents or sneaking looks at the cake Molly had prepared, Harry turned to the adult Order members, Draco – it had become a normal occurrence these days – standing and walking at his side like an honour guard.

Gravely, the Boy Who Lived inclined his head towards Kingsley and threw a short, abrupt greeting in the direction of Moody that was answered with an equally abrupt acknowledgement.

He received the usual 'Wotcher' from Tonks and managed to sneak in a question about the ongoing dealings with the aurors, before Molly enveloped him in a hug and scolded everyone near her for mixing work with pleasure.

Harry grinned at Remus, then nodded to his former Headmaster and Head of House with a calm, self-confident respect.

"Albus. Minerva," He greeted them quietly, and nothing betrayed that this was the boy who had been faint with excitement at his introduction into the Order not long ago.

Then, Harry turned to the party guests closer to his own age, and Remus couldn't quite hide a smile. Here, he saw what he had searched Harry's face for in vain: all the barely contained excitement, the gangly teenager bodies and the nervous enthusiasm of youth.

Just a year ago, Harry had been like this, had shared Ron's insecurity with physical contact, Neville's shyness and Ginny's badly hidden awe at the presence of so many adults she considered her heroes.

This year, he hugged Ginny and Neville and Luna without reserve before clapping Ron on the back. This year, he moved without hesitation from one group to the other.

This year, he was one of the adults, one of the heroes, and he reacted to Ginny's star-struck expression with the ease of a much older man.

He had grown up. He had crossed the invisible line he had been balancing on for years, and his feet stood firm in the newly chartered territory.

Remus wasn't sure whether he liked what he saw.

The thought never quite left him, not while he took his tea and cake sitting between Tonks and Kingsley, sharing their disgust of the new Ministry 'safety'-procedures with all the indignation he could muster these days.

It resurfaced while he watched Harry open his presents, slowly, methodically, not with the awed excitement of a child but the acceptance of a man, and noticed that nearly all presents were accessories to the battle that was to come, from the charmed dragon-hide boots the Weasleys had bought for him to Luna's present of a protection amulet, made from the hair of all of his friends.

The thought pulsed and mingled with curiosity when Draco caught Harry's attention effortlessly, leading him over to a cluster of trees at the other end of the garden. Remus couldn't hear what they were saying, but he saw Draco opening a small box and presenting Harry with something, and he saw the strong, nearly rough embrace in which Harry pressed Draco to him, body against body, making Remus wonder once more about those two.

The thought wouldn't leave Remus while the afternoon progressed, and when he found himself next to Albus Dumbledore, the both of them sipping tea and watching the party guests, he saw it echoed on the older man's face.

"He is nearly ready," Albus said quietly, half glad, half resigned. "They look up to him, and soon he will be able to lead them."

Remus turned to his former mentor in surprise, then followed Albus' gaze to the Order members scattered across the garden. He wasn't sure if they were even aware of it themselves, but whatever they were doing, whatever they were talking about, some small part of them was concentrated on Harry, following his every move and gesture, gravitating around him like planets around the sun.

Remus had noticed this dynamic many times around Dumbledore and, in that half forgotten past of youth and innocence, around James Potter after an especially successful Quidditch game. But to see grown men and women turn towards a teenager in this way, to watch him with a strange hunger that seemed to wait for salvation and catastrophe at the same time… it made Remus nervous and deeply unhappy.

"It shouldn't be this way," He whispered, unconsciously seeking solace with Albus just as the other Order members were doing it with Harry. "He is barely more than a child."

"It has always been this way," Albus disagreed mildly, but his eyes, too, held a fair amount of sadness. "One leader follows another, and people turn to him without even noticing it. There have always been free spirits – like Severus and Hermione, like Minerva – but this is what most human beings need. Someone to look up to. Someone to trust in. It is a heavy burden, but someone must carry it. And there are few in his generation that could carry it as well as Harry."

Remus wanted to disagree and argue, but then he caught a glimpse of Albus' sad, tired face from the corner of his eye, and he understood that the Headmaster was not only talking of Harry. He was also talking of himself.

They had come to a turning point, Remus realized in this moment. For long, dark decades it had been Albus who had carried this burden, an Albus that had once been just as young and insecure and hopeful has Harry had been, not so long ago.

And then this task had descended on his old mentor's life, had chosen his path for him and destroyed all other choices. It had been his responsibility for longer than Remus had lived. And now, at last, it was time for the younger generation to take over.

Time for another Chosen One to take on his Dark Lord and mould the future to his will.

Time for another sacrifice of innocence, that of Harry and those close to him, to ensure the wizarding world's safety over the years to come.

And one part of Remus wanted to step in and halt this show, stop Harry from taking another step on this road that would leave him, would leave all of them forever changed. He was the last of the Marauders, the former friend of Lily and James, and somehow he doubted that they had envisioned this kind of destiny for their only child.

The other part of him knew that it was too late already, and echoed Dumbledore's words in his mind.

And then Severus stepped from the house into the garden.

The surprise took Remus' mind off the long considered subject. With nearly everyone at the Burrow, Remus wouldn't have expected Severus to come here or to even leave Hermione's side. He had been obsessive in his security precautions ever since she had returned, something Remus understood too well. To leave her alone with Hestia Jones was rather out of character for him.

But when Remus saw his colleague's eyes scanning the crowds and landing on Harry, he understood that Severus hadn't come to linger or celebrate.

Inconspicuously, he drifted closer to Harry and sensed Albus at his side doing the same. Which was laughable, really, since Severus had probably noted everyone's position and their movement patterns the moment he left the house. He would know of their curiosity immediately – but then there was really no reason to announce it to the rest of the Order, Remus thought sheepishly and inched another step closer.

Severus stalked towards Harry with the quick, self-confident step they hadn't seen with him for far too long. In front of the Gryffindor, he seemed to hesitate a moment, before he shortly inclined his head in a gesture of respect and pulled something from his robe pocket.

"Harry," He said without inflection, and offered him the object.

It was a birthday present. It wasn't wrapped, of course – even the thought of Severus Snape wrapping gifts would have given most of the party guests heart attacks -, but it was a present nevertheless, and Remus could remember well enough the words Severus had repeated whenever the occasion arose: "I don't do gifts."

That he offered one now, to the young man he had hated for six and a half long years, surprised Remus nearly as much as the rest of the guests. It also touched him in ways he hadn't expected.

But Harry, the centre of this rather bewildering development, remained quiet, just meeting Severus' greeting with a slight bow of his own.

"Severus," He answered, then waited calmly for the older man to continue.

"You have come a long way," The Spymaster said, quietly, but everyone heard him. "Don't leave your path."

And Harry smiled, a blazing, fierce, delighted smile that didn't bother to hide how much this moment meant to him, and took the book.

"Thank you, Severus," He said, and to Remus' astonishment, Severus answered the smile with one of his own.

"You are very welcome, Harry."

Once more he inclined his head and sent Draco a look of something like fond exasperation, as if he knew more of what was going on than the rest of them.

Then, he turned around, his robes billowing behind him like they had been wont to do in better days, and re-entered the house, leaving a garden full of excited and dumbstruck party guests and a young man who cradled a book in his hands as if it was a precious thing.

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"What…"

The voice was soft, barely audible, and yet Harry whirled around as if someone had shouted into his ear, nearly dropping the goblet of water he had just poured himself.

"What… day is it?"

Hermione. And in the moment it took Harry to understand what was happening, that she had finally, _finally_ woken up, he realized that he had nearly forgotten what her voice sounded like.

"What day…"

"It is the fifth of August, and you're at Hogwarts, at the Headquarters of the Order of the Phoenix," Harry answered slowly, trying to recall everything Hestia Jones had drilled into them in preparation of this moment.

_Articulate carefully_, she had told them. _NO sudden movements or touches. Try to find out as much about her mental state as possible. And call me _immediately_. _

He pressed the enchanted button near the door that would alert Hestia, Dumbledore and Severus of a change in her condition, then slowly walked towards the bed, careful to keep his arms very still and his hands at his sides.

"Hermione," He said, trying to keep his rising excitement out of his voice. "Do you… do you know who I am?"

He was terrified, his hands clammy with sweat and his breathing fast and shallow, as if he had run for miles. She would be all right. She _had_ to be all right, but still he remembered his conversation with Severus and the risks the other man had talked about.

"Yes…" The answer was laboured and slurred, as if dredged up from the bottom of an ocean, but Harry sagged with relief.

"Harry…" Her eyes seemed to cloud, her face grimaced in sudden pain, and she moaned, a soft, desperate sound that made his relief vanish into thin air. "…Why… am I here?"

There was such bewilderment in her question, such lost confusion, that Harry forgot Hestia's advice and reached out for her, only to have her flinch away violently from him.

"I'm sorry, Hermione," He said quickly, cursing himself. "I won't hurt you, I promise. I'll just stay over here."

And he retreated from the bed, recalling all too well the panicked animal she had been before Severus had administered his potion.

She took a deep breath, as if to steady herself, and tried to lift her head, only to fall back into the pillows with another one of those terrible, soft moans.

"What _happened_ to me?" She asked in rising desperation, and he couldn't say whether she referred to the weakness of her body or the memory holes in her mind.

Harry didn't know how to answer the question.

"You…" he began, not sure how to continue, but then the door opened, slowly, and he saw Hestia Jones' face peeping through the rack, her eyes a silent question.

"She's awake," He mouthed and the door swung open softly.

Hestia Jones was obviously out of breath, but still she moved as calmly and self-assured as if she had been present all the time, and her confident professionalism turned the room into a lighter, safer place.

"It is good to have you back, Miss Granger," She began soothingly. "Do you remember me?"

Hermione frowned and squinted, as if finding it hard to see, then nodded slowly.

"Hestia Jones…" She whispered, and the Healer beamed at her in approval.

"Very good! Now, Miss Granger, I will just run a few tests to make sure you are in good health. I will stay over here and you will be able to see my wand clearly all the time. Shall we?"

She waited for another nod, then raised her wand slowly, as if expecting a violent reaction, but Hermione lay very still, just watching them both carefully in the soft light that filtered through the curtains.

"Excellent," The healer murmured. "Excellent… now dear, do you feel up to answering a few questions? We will tell you everything you want to know in another moment."

Again a soft nod, barely visible but clearly there for eyes that had watched her still, sleeping face for so long now.

"Well then," Hestia began, flicked her wand and a clipboard appeared in her hand. "Do you know what year it is?"

"1998", Hermione answered after a moment of thought. "Unless…"

Again that moment of bewilderment, and Harry nodded quickly to tell her that it was all right, that she hadn't lost a whole year of her life.

"Very good," Hestia Jones said, again in that tone of approval that was probably meant to relax and gratify her patients, but to Harry no mockery could have been bitterer.

She was talking to Hermione, the cleverest witch of her age, the girl who had designed her first spells in fifth year, who could outwit Mad-Eye Moody and whose council even Albus Dumbledore sought. She shouldn't sound as if knowledge of the right year was a major achievement!

But despite Harry's inner protest, the healer's catalogue of questions ran on and on. Hermione was asked for her birthplace and the name of her primary school, her elective subjects in third year and the three tasks of the Triwizard Tournament. What were her friends' names? Her parents'? Who led the Order of the Phoenix? And who – this was asked after a tiny moment of hesitation – who was Voldemort?

And Hermione answered every question, but there was something in the way she thought, and concentrated, and spoke slowly, enunciating every syllable, that worried Harry immensely.

She didn't talk like someone who remembered things because they had happened to her, he realized after listening to her recital of their classmates. She talked as if she had read about them in a book.

Only when she looked at him did something like recognition, like life glimmer in her eyes, but she only met his gaze for a moment before she turned her head away and stared into nothing.

Neither did she react to Dumbledore, who had entered the room silently during the Healer's examination and waited patiently until she had finished before he welcomed Hermione back with eyes that were twinkling merrily.

"It is good to see you awake again, my dear," He greeted her and she nodded her thanks with eyes that held neither emotion nor relief. Harry's heart gave a little hitch when he saw it, and for a moment he feared that this would be the moment when gaps in her knowledge began to appear.

"Thank you…Headmaster," She answered finally, after a silence that was too long to be natural, and Harry found himself relaxing again. He wondered how long this would be happening to him, how long he would feel these odd moments of fear until he began to trust in earnest, then decided that it didn't matter just as long as she was back and awake.

But Hermione seemed to share none of their joy over her return. If anything, her face grew more nervous by the minute.

"What happened to me?" She again repeated her question, and Dumbledore hesitated for a moment, trading look with Hestia Jones, before slowly lowering himself into the armchair by her bedside.

"Well, my dear," He began. "If you would tell us the last thing you remember…"

The door was ripped open violently and Severus strode into the room, his face more agitated than Harry seen it for a long time. He saw Hermione and his step faltered, broke, came to a stumbling halt.

Harry saw his eyes widen and his hand twitching, reaching towards her and then falling back to hang limply at his side again.

For a long moment, Severus just stared at her, his eyes raw and open and his mouth like a crack in dry, hard earth, then something changed in his face.

And he turned away.

"Her vitals?" He asked, his voice not quite smooth.

Without betraying what she made of this situation, Hestia Jones began to rattle fact after fact to him and Severus nodded quietly, as if these meaningless numbers held any importance when Hermione was awake and finally sane again!

Harry turned away from Severus and let his eyes once more rest on his friend. For a moment he thought he saw… something, an emotion deeper and clearer than anything he had noticed on her face since she had woken, becoming stronger and more pronounced as she watched the Spymaster silently. Then it was gone again, and she seemed to shrink back into her body, once again the confused-not-quite-Hermione he couldn't really understand.

"What happened?" Her desperation was audible this time and her voice rose in a semblance of emotion. Harry realized that no one had answered her question yet, and decided that she had a right to know, no matter how much the information might shock her.

He opened his mouth to explain, but Severus beat him to it.

"You executed emergency plan delta b," He said coldly, calmly. "Then Jane pulled a 'Julia' on you."

Surprised and more than a bit irritated, Harry looked up into the cool eyes of his Spymaster. As he watched the appraising, analytical set of his eyes, Harry realized that Snape, too, was testing her, was inspecting her knowledge in areas Hestia Jones couldn't begin to assess. He assumed that this was part of the elaborate code system the two of them had set up during their partnership, and that Severus was hoping to find out whether she remembered more than just basic facts and her personal history, whether she was still versed in the arts of spying and the politics of the Order.

But still… the woman he loved was back, was finally among the living again, and the first thing he did was test her? Harry hadn't been sure how Severus would react in this situation, but he certainly hadn't expected this.

He turned back around in time to see Hermione frown in confusion, then turn pale, her eyes widening in shock and horror. So she had understood. But again there had been this strange hesitation, as if she had to remember some historic or scientific fact, not a part of her own life.

"How long?" She whispered, dread evident in her face. "How long was I gone?"

"Two months," Harry answered when Severus showed no interest in doing so, instead watching her like a hawk for signs of weakness. "You… left on the sixth of June and Jane brought you back about three weeks ago. You have been in a coma ever since," He added, deciding not to mention the animal-Hermione they had woken for a short time.

"Two months…" Hermione repeated in a tone Harry could not interpret. "How did I get out?"

"I finished the experimental potion I had been working on. Then I re-laid the foundations of your memory palace," Severus replied, still in that uncomfortably assessing tone.

Again, it seemed to take Hermione a moment to understand, but then she nodded.

"Who held me?" She asked, a soft trembling in her voice.

"Lucius Malfoy." Severus' voice was cool, controlled, but Harry could see how his lips were thinning even further in expectance of her reaction.

Hermione closed her eyes, lashes unnaturally dark against her pale skin. Her lips parted slightly, another one of those soft, heart-wrenching moans escaping her self control.

And Harry saw how Severus' whole body stiffened, how he leaned forward slightly, as if his whole being was burning to rush to her side. The Spymaster's eyes darkened and his fists were clenched tightly against the black fabric of his robes.

Then, Severus pulled himself together with visible effort, returning to the cool distance Harry had found so unbelievable moments before.

But this time, he understood. Severus was holding himself back. He was controlling himself with more discipline than Harry had considered possible, on the edge of giving in and losing that precious detachment he needed to help her, to assess the possible damage Hermione had suffered.

Yet again, he was controlling his own wishes for her sake. And as if this realization had pulled a veil back from Harry's eyes, he now saw the feelings hidden in the dark depth of his Spymaster's gaze, saw the tension that vibrated through his whole body and the way his fists opened and closed as if they wanted nothing more than to grab her and hold her tight.

And once again, Harry was awed, both by Severus' discipline and by the depth of his emotions.

"This is necessary," The Spymaster said now, as if answering to Harry's unvoiced realization, and it took Harry a moment to understand that his words were meant as an explanation to Hermione, a prelude to the things that would follow.

"Recite the steps of contact protocol Midgard three," Severus said, no demanded, and although Hermione's face was still pale and her eyes still closed, she answered him in a quick sequence of numbers and names that made absolutely no sense to Harry.

"Correct," Severus said. "Name the Death Eaters of the Inner Circle and their main weaknesses."

While Harry listened and watched this second round of questions and answers, his eyes still on Hermione, he noticed that Albus had slipped from the room, probably to alert the others to Hermione's awakening.

"Recite the different steps of the Triggered Obliviate."

The entrance of both Minerva and Remus a few minutes later proved him right. He frowned for a moment, wondering where Draco was, but then a caught a glimpse of his friend's platinum blond hair in the doorway. Harry frowned with irritation. Draco's fears might have been reasonable before, but now that Hermione was so obviously herself, he would be damned if he accepted this lingering in corners and behind doors.

Slowly, remembering Hermione's reaction to quick movements, he walked over to the door and opened it wide, allowing everyone in the room a clear view of Draco.

"This is ridiculous, Draco," He whispered and took his friend's arm. "Come in there with me this minute."

For a moment, he seriously expected Draco to refuse, but then his friend sighed, murmured something that sounded suspiciously like 'Gryffindors' and allowed Harry to pull him over to the wall opposite of the bed.

Meanwhile, Severus progressed with his more than thorough test. They were down to Arithmancy formulae now, or at least that was Harry's half-educated guess. Even Albus looked slightly put out by the continued quizzing, but it was Minerva who finally put her foot down.

"I think we can safely assume that Hermione's mental abilities have not suffered," She announced in her clear, crisp voice, interrupting Severus in mid-sentence. "And let me say that I am extremely glad to see you well and awake again, my dear."

She smiled her rare smile but made no move to close in on Hermione, probably too remembering the instructions of Hestia Jones.

"It is good to have you back, Hermione," Remus added, beaming with all the kindness Harry had liked in him from their first meeting.

Hermione tried to smile back, it was obvious from the strain in her face that she really tried, but the gesture lacked animation and seemed only to underline how exhausted she was.

"Remus, Minerva," She carefully announced, pronouncing every syllable as if this too was a test. Her eyes moved through the room to rest on the Slytherin at Harry's side.

"Draco," She whispered, and again Harry could make out feelings in the chocolate brown of her eyes.

Draco stiffened – Harry recognized one of the pureblood postures Draco had taught him a few months ago -, slowly walked over to the bed and stopped suddenly, as if unsure whether he would be allowed to come closer.

"Hermione," He whispered, his lips white with tension. "I am so, so sorry. Please tell me if my presence disturbs you – I will leave immediately."

Instead of the fear and hate Draco was obviously waiting for, only confusion showed on Hermione's face.

"Why?" She whispered, clearly worried but more alive than she had been before. "Are you angry with me?"

Draco hissed in surprise and involuntarily stepped closer to her bed, his hand half raised as if to hide his face.

"Don't you remember?" He asked, painfully vulnerable under her gaze. "Don't you know what I did?"

She hesitated a moment, her eyes darting to Hestia Jones, to Severus, to Albus, as if expecting to be rebuked for this gap in her memories.

"No," She answered. "What happened?"

Draco turned pale and opened his mouth to confess, but Severus interrupted him.

"It was after your capture," He explained, still cool and distant.

"Ah," Hermione breathed, and there was no mistaking the relief in her voice. "Then I can't possibly remember it, Draco."

"But you saw me, you recognized me," Draco said, clearly not willing to let go of his guilt that easily.

"It was probably shortly before she dismembered her memory palace," Severus said, his eyes once again on Hermione, testing and assessing.

"It's just like a computer crash," Hermione explained, her voice still tired and raspy, but she obviously felt safer now that she could snap into lecture mode. "You can reboot but the files you didn't save will be lost, some of them irretrievable, some of them reconstructable."

Unsurprisingly, this explanation meant nothing to Draco, although Hermione obviously expected it to help. _Draco's a pureblood_, Harry thought with a growing sense of worry. _He doesn't understand computers. And the old Hermione would never have forgotten that!_

"They are lost," He said quickly, before Hermione could delve deeper into muggle metaphors. "Because Hermione couldn't fix them to 'Hogwarts a History'. And I don't think we'll miss those memories, will we?"

"That depends," Severus said coldly. Was there a new tone in his voice? Harry wasn't sure, but then his mind was overtaxed to grasp the surrealism of the situation anyway.

What were they doing here? Hermione was awake and well, and instead of celebrating, of telling her how much she had been missed, they were wasting their time with tests and mental games! Draco was fixated on his own guilt and Severus behaved as if he had nothing to do with the woman lying in the bed!

And now there was this strange edge in his voice, this aggression Harry couldn't name or understand but that was clearly mirrored in the way their Spymaster stood, hands clasped behind his back, feet placed apart as if bracing himself for a blow.

"That depends," He continued, "on whether Hermione has managed to play her role convincingly to the last. It would certainly be gratifying to know if her _sacrifice_ has been worth it."

Harry couldn't help himself. He stared. What the hell was going on here?

"Do you really think it is the right time to talk about this?" He asked, not bothering to hide his irritation.

"Why not?" Severus replied, now decidedly snappish. "After all, the plan is the most important thing in the world, isn't it?"

Severus Snape sullen and snappish? Harry remembered Draco's teachings just in time to stop his jaw from dropping and his eyes from widening. He shared a glance with Albus, whose eyes were old and unreadable.

"I don't think I slipped," Hermione answered tiredly. It seemed as if she was the only one not noticing the strange undercurrent that changed the room's atmosphere to a nervous chill. "I executed the procedure correctly, after all, and I certainly wouldn't have remained with… Lucius… if Voldemort had learned of the danger."

The snappishness had deepened into a sneer on Severus' face, and his voice had cooled down to that offensive drawl Harry hadn't heard for a long time.

"You sound rather sure for someone who doesn't remember the last months," He objected, and this time Harry's jaw _did _drop.

Minerva's lips had thinned and she was looking at Severus in a way that threatened a severe tongue lashing, while Remus looked just as confused as Harry felt.

But no one seemed willing to step in. Harry felt dizzy with confusion.

"Losing those memories doesn't impugn my logic, nor does it take away the memories of before." Still no irritation in Hermione's voice, still no sign that she had noticed something was wrong.

"If your logic is so impeccable then, why don't you tell me the reasoning that led to your harebrained decisions in June, Hermione? Why don't you justify lying to all of us?"

_That's enough_, Harry wanted to say, fed up with Severus' strange behaviour and the compliance of everyone in the room, but an old, surprisingly strong hand stopped him in his tracks.

"Look at him, Harry," Albus, whose approach Harry hadn't even noticed, whispered in his ear. "Severus is close to the breaking point. Sometime, we have to let emotions run their course. He needs to purge his anger, or he will never be able to forgive her or indeed himself."

Yes, there was anger in Severus' eyes, Harry acknowledged, a growing fury that was swiftly replacing all discipline and scientific detachment.

And with his last words, Hermione had finally noticed it, too. The open surprise in her face, the wounded confusion made Harry's heart ache, but his respect for Albus' judgment and the strange burning in Severus' eyes kept him silent.

"I only did what was necessary," She whispered, without any of the spirit a situation like this would normally have elicited from her. "I only tried to make sure that the plan would work!"

"Necessary," Severus repeated, his voice a distinct growl now.

His arms rose as if he wanted to shake her and his lips pulled back into a snarl, bearing his teeth. Harry tensed, readying himself to step between them and stop the confrontation that seemed inevitable now, but instead of advancing on Hermione, Severus turned away abruptly, facing the window.

The rigid line of his shoulders screamed anger to all in the room, and Harry thought he could hear his breathing, rough and quick.

Helplessly, Hermione's eyes darted through the room, searching for an explanation or perhaps protection. Harry noticed Draco stirring at his side, but again Albus stepped in before the strange intimacy of the situation would be broken by someone else.

_We shouldn't ask her to deal with this_, Harry thought, _Not so soon after waking up._

But when was the right time, then? Severus had kept all this inside for weeks now, all bottled up and choking him. What would happen if they stopped him now, forced him to pull it all back inside and shut the lid? If this possibility even existed anymore.

And what would happen to Hermione? Perhaps this was exactly what she needed – a confrontation strong enough to raise her from this awful apathy, an ignition of her flame that would make her return to them in both body and spirit.

Hermione seemed to sense the significance of the moment just as sharply as everyone else in the room, for she remained silent for an inordinate amount of time. Harry could see her mouth opening once, twice, her jaw clenching and unclenching as if the effort of speaking overwhelmed her.

"Severus," She finally whispered, barely audible. But as quiet as her whisper had been, he heard it well enough.

"Don't you dare!" He shouted, whirling around suddenly and fixing her with a look of such rage that Harry jumped in surprise. "Don't you dare call me Severus like that, as if nothing had happened!"

Sorrowful eyes stared at him from a white face, but still there was more confusion in them than empathy, more surprise than understanding.

"Do you have any idea what you did to me, Hermione, to us all?" Severus now yelled, stalking towards her with billowing robes. "You drugged me! You put an Imperius on me, you broke every promise you ever made, betrayed every trust I had in you! You took my life with you when you went, and you had the audacity to tell me that I had to go on without you! You told me so in a letter!"

She shook, as if a sudden jolt had gone through her. Eyes impossibly wide, fists grabbing the bed linen, she made no sound, but her lips slowly opened, formed into a silent little 'Oh' of realization and shock.

Suddenly, she was Hermione again, and her face was so filled with emotion that Harry found it hard to remember the empty, lifeless doll-face she had been only moments before.

"We were partners, Hermione, partners!" Severus growled, so close to her bed now that he could reach out and touch her any moment, but she didn't flinch back as she had done with Harry. "I thought you trusted me! I thought I meant more to you than a convenient arrangement until your real plans could be put into action! I thought you loved me!"

Unable to watch the pain in Severus' face any longer, Harry turned his head away from him, towards Hermione, whose eyes were glittering with unshed tears.

"I know," She whispered, Hermione-words in a Hermione-voice, gloriously alive in her pain. "I understand, Severus."

"How could you possibly understand?" Severus yelled. He was trembling now with the strength of his anger. His face was an open wound. "You took all my masks away, all my pretences and my anger, and when you left, I had nothing! How should I have lived on, will you tell me that? Will you tell me how, Hermione?"

"I know. But I am back now," She whispered again, and it was the truth. She _was _back, just as he was back, despite all the fury and the pain, was finally the Severus again they had waited for all these weeks.

As they had done in the past, they found each other. Both of them lost in despair as they had been before, they had again found a way to build bridges that would carry them across to each other. And while his pain, dark and all-consuming, had reached out to her and lifted her from wherever she had been hiding, her hand found his, clutching it with all the strength she possessed.

The touch seemed to anchor him, drew him back from the sea of rage and fear he had been lost in for so long. All fight went out of him. His shoulders slumped and his eyes snapped to hers.

They drank each other in, each drawing on the other, each feeding the other.

"I went mad with grief for a while," He confessed into the sudden silence. "It didn't work without you. Nothing does anymore."

"I know, Severus."

And suddenly, as she smiled at him, it was as if the cloud that had pressed on them for months now disappeared, leaving them free to breathe the summer air again.

"But I am back now. It's all right, Severus. Everything is all right. "

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Review, please!


	73. The Dream of a Shadow

**A/N**: Thank you to you all for your many reviews and well wishings! Here's the next chapter, and I hope you'll like it. You can find answers to your many questions (from the length of this story to the relationship between Harry and Draco) on my livejournal. Just click on the homepage-link on my profiles, then on ‚recent entries'.

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**The Dream of a Shadow**

But all right it was not.

Draco barely remembered the day of Hermione's return to consciousness, filled to the brim with worry and guilt and relief as it had been. He had a clear picture of Hermione forgiving him in his mind, but it had taken a sleepless night and a long conversation with Harry to convince himself that this was real.

When he had, happiness and hope had overwhelmed him in a way he hadn't expected, enough to wash away Harry's doubts and his own fears completely.

Everything he had believed lost, their friendship, their future, those evenings together had suddenly become possible again.

He spent hours at her bedside, filling her in on all that had happened since she had vanished. And she nodded and listened and asked all the right questions.

She did it so well that it took Draco nearly a week to notice that something was wrong.

It wasn't surprising that she seemed tired all the time and slightly overwhelmed – untended injuries and malnourishment did that to a person.

Nor was he worried that she avoided all touch and flinched back when involuntary skin contact was made. She had been tortured, after all, tortured and more, and if anything Draco was relieved that she didn't seem to fear his physical presence more than that of Harry or Hestia Jones.

And all the rest seemed easily explainable, too – the monosyllabic answers, the long resting periods, the refusal to leave her room.

Nothing they hadn't expected, although it pained Harry and Draco to see her like this. But there were other things, things he couldn't ignore even though he tried.

Her total disinterest in their training and battle plans, just for one. Even bleeding and half-dead, Hermione's first interest had always been the war. She had wanted to know every detail, had wanted to be involved in as many projects as possible. Now, when it was mentioned, she simply nodded and let the topic drift away as soon as possible.

The long silences before she answered his questions, as if communication had become a difficult chore to her. She had always been so intuitive before, leaping to conclusions before others understood the argument, always one step ahead, always willing to discuss everything and anything.

The way her humour, once so dry and witty, seemed to have evaporated completely. He had made a joke on her second day back, and she had just _looked_ at him, looked at him for an absurdly long time and had then asked, in a voice that made clear that she wasn't sure: "This is a joke, isn't it?"

The distance between her and Severus, a thing Draco couldn't understand, no matter how hard he tried or how long he debated over it with Harry. They had been through so much together that their relationship seemed unquestionable to Draco, a fixed mark that couldn't be changed by anything in the world.

And after she had woken up and punched through his armour of scientific detachment and superhuman discipline with frightening ease – once their confrontation had been over, Draco had been embarrassed to have witnessed such an openly sentimental display from these more than private persons -, after she had woken up and had been lucid, Draco had been sure that they would work through their problems in no time.

He had even expected her to move in with him once more the next day.

Yet here they were again, Severus watching, observing her with something like detached curiosity, and she watching right back, neither of them reaching out to the other nor seeming to feel the need.

As if they were strangers. As if they were nothing to each other, despite everything they had shared, and no matter how hard Draco tried to talk to them about it, Severus would only tell him that a Slytherin observed and waited for the right moment. Hermione would just change the topic.

In the end, her eyes betrayed her. She could listen to Draco for hours, her face simulating interest so convincingly that it would have fooled the best, but her eyes remained clouded, distant. Behind lids half closed that seemed to form a curtain between her and the world, they were frighteningly empty.

They might still be intelligent, projecting every appropriate reaction with a master spy's perfection. But they weren't Hermione's eyes.

No, all was not right, Draco began to think while he babbled on, knowing at the same time that his presence was a strain to her, nothing more.

He understood now why Severus had chosen to keep his distance. This was not the same Hermione, and although everyone pretended to be happy and relieved, they all knew it. Smiles were beginning to turn brittle, voices were beginning to sound shrill, and the eager stream of visitors began to thin.

Something was very wrong.

0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o

She remembered. In a haze of dreams and thoughts and pictures her past had come to her in half sleep, induced by the voices of her loved ones and nourished by a mind that had always soaked up knowledge like a sponge.

She remembered. It hurt, more than she had imagined when she had worked on the techniques, more than she had feared before she had given up and hidden herself behind her trapdoor. But there was no way out of it, she was consuming the images and was consumed by them, victim to this mad life that was forced upon her (_your own life, Hermione)_, helpless spectator to this whirl of action and reaction.

She remembered.

The first time she had performed accidental magic - and she had been so happy, so relieved, because she had just known that everything would be alright, that, now that there was an explanation for her strangeness, there would finally be a place for her to fit in.

She had dreamed of this Hogwarts when she got her letter, a castle full of boys and girls just like her, children to talk and to laugh with, just as she had seen other children laugh and talk in school.

The face of her parents, proud and frightened as they realized that her daughter would enter a world they could never share, the soft lines in mother's face and the way her father would bake pancakes, just for her. The way they had stared at the Hogwarts Express and at her, when she had boarded the train to leave them behind.

She remembered.

Entering the Great Hall for the first time, so terribly afraid that she would do something wrong, that she would slip up and people would notice she didn't belong here.

Her awe at everything, her naïve wish of belonging and the disappointment when the other children had laughed at her just like the ones in her old school, when they had called her bookish and boring and bossy.

The way she had felt when Ron and Harry had come to rescue her, the fierce warmth that had filled her chest, not because she had wanted rescuing, but because these two had thought her worth it and wanted to be her friends.

She remembered.

The way the dementors had closed in on her, Harry and the still mostly unknown Sirius at her side, and while the cold clawed at her soul and fear warred with despair, she found to her own surprise that she was glad. Her eyes searched for Harry's and she felt relief that, although they would die now, she hadn't left him alone. She would not look back from the future and know that she had failed him.

Harry's face after the goblet of fire had transported him back to Hogwarts, childlike in its pain and utterly old at the same time, while he clutched Cedric's body to his chest and cried and cried, and she sitting safely on the stands, a leaden feeling in her stomach, knowing that everything would change now, that nothing would ever be the same again, but also knowing that it had finally happened – he had been hurt, and afraid, and alone, and she hadn't been there to help him.

Running through the Department of Mysteries, fighting Death Eaters infinitely more powerful than her – and she suddenly realized that this was what her life had become, that it was more than friendship and adventures, more than being brave. She understood that this fight could cost her life, at the same time that she understood why it had to be done.

She remembered.

Draco, sitting alone by the Great Lake, his shoulders slumped and all arrogance gone from his face. And how her whole body had hurt, screaming at her to return to Infirmary and let others deal with the fallout, but she had gone on, had touched his cold shell and swallowed down her own fear of rejection.

Her parents' face when she had come home that summer, weary and afraid and on medication. Her mother, sitting at the kitchen table, her face more vulnerable than Hermione could remember, trying to say something and not daring to, not sure how to speak to this daughter that had become a stranger.

The first Order meeting she and Harry and Ron had been invited to. How she had been sitting among legends, among people she had admired her whole life. Seeing their fear, their confusion. And realizing, with a cold, sinking feeling in her throat, that they were only human. They were no better than her, just older. They wouldn't work a miracle and solve their problems, they were just as frightened as she was.

She remembered.

Sitting in the darkness of her Potions Master's private rooms, crying helplessly over his mangled and humiliated body and feeling something shift inside her. _It is time, Hermione_, something had whispered inside her mind, _You have to grow up now. You have to take your place. This is the way_.

And as she remembered, she felt awe at the complex, courageous thing that was Hermione Granger, awe and disbelief that this should be herself when she was nothing but a trembling, frightened thing hiding under a cloak of flesh and bones.

How to wear it again? How to return to her old life and those faces she now knew but felt disconnected from, as if they had been part of another life, another world?

She couldn't claim that other Hermione's courage and determination, although she had the memories of her actions. She couldn't share her love and fear, although she remembered these feelings and the people that Hermione held dear.

She had no right to this life, no right to the care and attention that was bestowed upon her day and night.

She felt like an impostor, and every time she had to react to them, every time she had to pretend affection or interest made her insides freeze with pain. She wanted to run away and hide, to shout at them that she didn't care what happened to the wizarding world and their war, that she wasn't the friend or lover or spy they looked to for help.

But it was hopeless. No matter how she felt, no matter what she thought, she _was _Hermione, and the others wouldn't understand. Hell, she didn't understand herself.

0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o

She woke early, well before dawn, shivering and sweating with the strange images of her nightmares. Everything was quiet, and the relief she felt at the realization that everyone was still asleep, that she wouldn't be forced to interact with her friends for another few, precious hours, made her suddenly realize how wrong all this was.

She had to end it. She couldn't give them what they wanted, couldn't offer what they needed so badly, and their deep belief in Hermione Granger, this divine image of a perfect student and friend, a cunning spy, a brilliant strategist and fierce warrior, did nothing to reduce her loneliness.

She wasn't that Hermione Granger. And she was tired of hiding in her skin.

She had to leave.

Packing was a thing of minutes – she didn't need much, after all. Some clothes, her wand and her knives. Everything else could be bought, and since she intended to empty one of the untraceable muggle accounts she had set up a year ago, money wouldn't be a problem.

When her eyes fell on the row of photographs some well meaning Order member had arranged on the mantelpiece, she hesitated. No photos of Hermione and Severus together existed, of course, since all hard evidence could fall into the wrong hands, but there were pictures of the Order as a whole, of Draco and of Harry…

But those weren't _her_ memories, and unless she managed to make them a part of her again, the pictures would be meaningless. If this life remained closed to her, they would be nothing but worthless reminders, echoes of laughter in an empty room.

She wrote a letter, painfully aware of how inadequate everything she said must be, but unable to help herself or leave without word.

She still remembered the relief she had seen on those strangely familiar faces, before said relief had turned into worry and doubt.

And then the only thing left to do was cast a lingering glance around the room, this room she had never really inhabited.

It probably had been easier to bear. She couldn't imagine waking up in more familiar surroundings, the Burrow, or her Head Girl room or especially Severus' chambers, where the memories of her past life would be superimposed over every thought and experience of today.

It had been one less thing to make her feel at home. Which made it easier to leave, of course, but still the loss closed her throat with a strange little ache, like a hiccup.

As dark and painful as Hermione's life had been, no one could deny that it had been full of friends, of wonders. Full of love.

She shook her head as if denying her thoughts and closed the door after herself quietly. She met no one as she left Headquarters through one of the magic tapestries and slowly made her way outside, but even if people had been up and about, the dark cloak she wore and the charms woven into its fabric would have averted their gazes.

Hogwarts… As she closed the secret entrance to the castle, longing and homesickness rose in her. She touched the cold, ancient stones and, after a moment of hesitation, rested her forehead on the fundaments of her home. This, too, she would give up. But there was no other way.

As she finally turned away, walking towards the edge of the wards, a strong sense of déja vu overcame her. She had felt this sensation time and time again over the last days as memories of her past life assaulted her without warning, overlaying the present like a thin film and clouding her experience.

Here she had walked with Severus after he had offered her a partnership, and there he had stood…

It took her a moment to realize that the dark, tall figure standing in the shadow of the trees wasn't just part of her memories, and when she realized that she wasn't alone in the dark, she felt sudden terror. A gasp escaped her lips, and while she angrily thought that the other Hermione would never have fled in terror, she frantically searched for an escape route.

That was when the figure lowered the hood of his cape, exposing the face of Severus Snape.

Her gasp turned into a hiss, and before her mind fully understood what she had seen, her body had turned around, intent on escape. But his voice stopped her.

"Hermione," He called, softly and without a hint of command, but her feet suddenly refused to carry her further away from him. She felt fear rising in her again, although she couldn't understand why, and for a moment she considered walking away from him, to simply leave and hope that she would reach the edge of the wards before he could reach her.

But she wasn't that much of a coward. Or at least she didn't want to be.

"Why are you here?" She called back, and if her voice trembled slightly, he gave no sign of noticing it. He simply stood there, hands open and relaxed at his sides to show that he was no threat. He knew her well all right, she thought as the first shock receded. One hint of movement and she would have been in flight.

"I've waited for you," He answered, so quietly that she stepped forward involuntarily to better hear him. Yes, a brilliant man. And dangerous.

She felt silly, getting all week kneed and heart-hammering over this answer, but she couldn't stop it, as if her body had been programmed to react to him this way.

"Why?" She whispered

"I've watched you this past week," He said simply. "And quite frankly, I am surprised that you bore it for so long."

She wanted to protest or deny understanding. One look into his dark eyes told her that he knew everything, and she flinched back, feeling his eyes burn on her skin.

"I had placed wards on your door and window when you returned," He forestalled her next question. "To ensure your safety. They alerted me when you left your room this morning."

Just for a moment, his eyes fell on the bag in her hand, lingering long enough to show his lack of surprise. So he knew that this wasn't simply an early morning walk, had probably known that she would do this before she had left her room. And he wanted her to know he knew.

"Why do you care?" She whispered.

He smiled. "I will always care about you, my love."

She flinched. There it was, the word it all boiled down to in the dark hours of the night. He loved Hermione. Everyone in this castle loved her.

And she couldn't answer the feeling. She remembered how it felt, the warmth and contentedness when Hermione had sat between Draco and Harry, the affection Hermione had felt towards McGonagall and Lupin, the tender admiration when Hermione had looked at the Headmaster. The shiver of longing when her eyes met those of Severus Snape. But it was like watching a summer afternoon through a window – you could see, but you couldn't hear, or smell, or feel. It was just a picture, a world apart.

And, just as she knew she didn't belong to these people, she knew their feelings were for Hermione, not for what she had become.

"You loved _her_," She pointed out, trying very much not to show that this thought hurt her. "The one always in control, the one you compared to silk and steel. I am not her."

She took a deep breath. "I don't even know who I am," She confessed in a whisper, wondering at the same time why she trusted this dark man, this man who produced a whirl of emotions – remembered and new – in her. "I know nothing, except that I am afraid all the time. And I don't think she was afraid."

"She was," He answered quietly, and the fact that he accepted her distinction between Hermione and herself somehow saddened and relieved her at the same time. "She was frightened and angry and human just like everyone in this castle. But perhaps most people didn't notice it."

"But you noticed," She said. "Just as you noticed that I am not her. That I am… different."

"I don't know who you have become," He agreed quietly. "But then I am not sure who I am now, either. The past weeks have changes us both irreversibly, I think."

She felt guilt, then, as she imagined his hopes and fears and the desperate wish to have his love back, only to find her in Hermione's place, an imperfect copy that struggled where she had leapt.

"Then you understand why I have to do this. Why I have to leave," She whispered, half hoping that he would disagree. Although she had no right to it, she wanted the warmth in his eyes. She wanted his loyalty to belong to her.

"Yes."

"So you're not here to stop me?"

"No," He answered, a tiny smile playing around the corner of his lips. "I am here to accompany you."

All thoughts, all calculation vanished, leaving nothing but pure astonishment. He waited, perhaps expecting a reaction, but all she could do was stare at him, and stare, and stare. So he gave a tiny sigh, as one would over a stubborn child, and continued.

"I will not judge you, nor demand from you what you are not ready to give. All I ask for is the right to stay with you, to assist you and to get to know you again."

"But," She whispered, not quite believing what he offered. "You are their Spymaster! You have responsibilities… they will need you in the coming days…"

"My task here is done," He interrupted her firmly. "There is only so much even the best Spymaster can do, and they have enough good fighters that the loss of one will not matter much. As for my responsibilities…"

He smiled at her. "I once resigned from my post as Potions Professor because it would have conflicted with my love. And as I once told my other Hermione…" Something in the way the way he looked at her with so much trust and love made hot and cold shudders run down her spine.

"… it was the easiest decision of my life. That still holds true."

"What if I didn't want you to come with me?" She asked, noticing how breathless she sounded.

His smile dimmed, and she felt pain at having caused him disappointment.

"Then I would accept your choice," He answered softly. "But I would still follow you at a distance, if only to ensure that you were safe. You know how stubborn I am."

Yes, she knew, and it was exactly this knowledge that made her want to flee his presence. In all the chaos her mind had become, the memory of this man stood out like a flame. Like a fire that gave her warmth and illuminated the maze she had lost herself in.

She was afraid it would burn her if she touched it.

It was temptation beyond what she could bear, need beyond what she could refuse.

"It seems as if my choices are limited," She finally remarked dryly. What was it about Severus Snape that made it impossible to keep her distance?

He smirked, but behind his amusement she could sense his utter delight at being accepted. The thought that this brilliant, brilliant man should feel such longing for her company humbled her.

"That might be the case," He answered. "And to further your enthusiasm I should perhaps mention that I packed my tea pot and two pounds of spice tea."

Suddenly, her mind was back on Hogwarts' grounds, her back hurting and her head aching, listening with growing confusion to his promise of a partnership. Listening and accepting.

The memory was a shock, clearer and more emotional than anything she had remembered this past week. She could smell the wet grass around them, could feel the texture of his skin as he bowed down to offer her entrance into his mind.

For a moment, she was this other Hermione, and the attraction of his smile became unbearable.

She took a deep, shuddering breath.

"I never could resist your spice tea," She whispered and saw the delight in his eyes deepen.

"No", He whispered back, his voice rich and dark. "You never could."

0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0

When Harry entered Hermione's room and found it empty, his first reaction was panic.

_No_, he thought, _not again, not so soon! We've barely realized that she's back!_

But then he noticed the open, empty cupboard and the carefully made bed, and something inside him uncoiled. This wasn't the scene of a kidnap or a desperate flight. Wherever she had gone, she had left from her own, free will.

He crossed the room, not quite sure what he was looking for. He noticed a scroll lying on the otherwise empty desk by the window, and felt the last of his fear evaporate, change into the bittersweet echoes of loss.

This was Hermione all right. She would never just leave. She would always make sure to explain.

His hands not quite steady, Harry broke the seal and unrolled the scroll.

0o0

_To whoever finds this, _

_I am sorry. I seem to be saying that a lot, I know, but it is the only thing I can give to you that is absolutely true. I have tried to hold myself together and be the person that you need and that you all missed so badly, but the truth is that I am not. _

_I am not sure _who_ I am, but there are things in my head that make no sense, that frighten me badly, and I won't be of any use to you until I have understood them. _

_Please, don't be angry with me. I don't know how long this will take, but I promise that I'll return one day. _

_The best of luck with your battle, _

Hermione

0o0

Harry took a deep breath and let the scroll sink to the desk. "Your battle" – the little sentence held everything they needed to know. The little hints that had kept Harry' doubts alive this past week, all those things that hadn't made sense clicked together, and the picture that built in his head mirrored Hermione's words.

Whether because of the things that had happened to her or because of the memory retrieval process, Hermione had changed.

And although it was hard for Harry to admit it, she'd have no chance to deal with these changes within the walls of Hogwarts. There was just too much of her old self here, too many memories and expectations.

"Clever girl," He whispered, strangely proud of her courage to make this step. "I hope you find what you're searching for."

His hand touched the scroll hesitantly, his thumb tracing the outline of the seal. He could understand her decision well enough after all the times he himself had dreamed of escaping his future as the Chosen One. But it wouldn't be so easy for the others – Draco would be devastated. And Severus…

Harry shivered slightly and grasped the scroll tighter. He was not looking forward to that discussion. True, Severus had kept his distance to her after those first, intense hours. But Harry remembered too well how much Severus had suffered during Hermione's capture. To loose her again so soon after her return…

He shook his head, driving those thoughts away. They would have to be told, and there was no sense in delay.

Harry pocketed the scroll, once more scanning the familiar room, and stepped from the private quarters section to Headquarters' assembly room, which was empty except for Albus. The Headmaster was sitting at the large oval table quietly, reading a scroll of his own.

"Hermione's gone," Harry offered without preamble, only to be confronted with twinkling blue eyes and a wry, very amused smile.

"And so is Severus," Albus answered, lifting the scroll he had been reading as in evidence.

They exchanged the letters silently, and Harry saw that although Severus had added a whole bundle of papers that looked like codes, timetables and tactical diagrams, his message itself was as short and succinct as Hermione's.

0o0

_Albus, _

_When you are reading this I will be gone, either to accompany Hermione or in pursuit of her. I am confident that you have noticed the same signs over the past week and will know why she left. _

_I do not know what her plans are. We might be returning in time for Halloween or we might be gone much longer than that. _

_If the latter be the case (I assume Hermione will have left a letter of her own that might offer details), I apologize for leaving you on the eve of battle. But my task is fulfilled, and I will never regret following her, wherever our path might lead us. _

_With sincere regards, _

Severus

0o0

Both Albus and Harry finished their letters at the same time, and as two scrolls sank to the table, their gazes found each other in bemused silence.

Harry wasn't quite sure what to say. They hadn't expected Hermione to partake in the battle although the plans before her capture had certainly included her.

But could they do without Severus? The past months had shown not only his formidable duelling skills but also his mastery of tactics and strategy, and Harry was worried that his absence might change the balance of enemies to their disadvantage.

As if reading Harry's thoughts, Albus sighed and caressed the scroll's seal, just as Harry had done not many minutes ago.

"He planned for this eventuality," Albus said. "I wondered why he developed a strategy that would make every person exchangeable by another. I thought that he was perhaps thinking of pre-battle casualties, but never really expected that Severus would take himself out of the equation. He is as ambitious a Slytherin as I have ever seen."

Albus sounded so bemused, so surprised, that Harry couldn't help but smile.

"Seems as if he found something better to fix his ambitions on," He suggested and was rewarded with a broad, satisfied smile.

"Yes," Albus agreed as I this was the best news he had heard for a long time.

One moment, Harry marvelled at the fact that they could share this, he and Albus, like two equals, two leaders that valued each other's opinion.

Then he remembered the other partnerships he had shared and lost, the easy yet deep friendship with Hermione, the respectful tutelage of Severus, and he felt their loss sharply.

"They are not coming back, are they," He said, and Albus' face softened in understanding.

"We can never be sure what the future holds, of course," The old Headmaster answered quietly. "But they have done their part. And I would be surprised to see them again ere a long, long time has passed."

Harry nodded, his shoulders hunched for a moment as he came to term with this answer.

Then he straightened, remembering everything Hermione and Severus had taught him, and felt resolve strengthening the outline of his own path.

"Then we will make sure to manage without them," He said.

0o0o0o0o0o0o0

They chose a hotel and checked in with barely a word from Hermione. He could see how tired she was, how desperate to get off her feet, but she held her back straight and her upper lip stiff, and something in her posture kept him from even offering her an arm in support.

Despite the last months and all that had happened between them they were back to that first, tentative truce he had offered her after one of the revels, back to that insecure trust that could shatter every moment.

It made Severus want to scream.

But he had known this wouldn't be easy, had known it from the moment of her waking and before, and at least she had allowed him to accompany her, had not slipped away into the great unknown on her own, to leave him behind again.

Although he wasn't too sure if she hadn't taken him with her out of pity.

Their rooms were pleasant, although it lacked the usual comforts of wizarding hotels, sporting a telly and a phone instead. Severus had proposed a muggel hotel, both to separate her as far from the magical world as possible and to lower the danger of being noticed. He had placed glamours on their hair and eyes, of course, but had decided after a moment of hesitation that she wasn't secure enough in her identity to deal well with a change of face and body.

No polyjuice, then. And since she was officially dead and he one of the more prominent fighters against Voldemort, a muggle hotel offered more safety than the best wizard accommodation could.

Expecting Hermione to want a room of her own, he had chosen two bedrooms with separate baths, connected via a living room, and as he unshrunk her bags in the larger bedroom, he saw that her view of the large forest was spectacular.

Glad to have finally arrived somewhere, Severus retired to his own room, carefully leaving all doors open for her to come and leave as she wanted, and lay down on the bed, fully clothed, arms outstretched in a silent posture of weariness.

He had never travelled much, since he had lacked the resources at first and later on the time, but if it felt like this, tiring to the bone and as if he had been stripped of something important, he could well do without it.

In the privacy of his own room, he admitted to himself that he was lonely. Hermione was with him, of course, and the thought that she was but three doors away from him made him smile even now, but the distance between them reminded him only of what they had once shared.

It reminded him that they might never regain it. Nothing but his hope told him that she would become her old self again, and he shivered at the thought that she would keep her distance and he would toil after her like a love sick puppy for the rest of his life.

But better than to be without her.

And who knew? Hermione had done the impossible more than once. If there was anyone able to break through, to fight her way back to him, it was his love. She was, after all, even more stubborn than he was.

With this thought on his mind and a smile on his lips, he fell asleep.

0o0

He awoke from the feeling of skin touching skin. He didn't tense, didn't even change his breathing pattern, but he was hyper aware of something moving on the bed, someone coming closer to his stretched out, seemingly still asleep form.

Then, he smelled Hermione's scent, and his astonishment must have shown in one of the subtle ways a body could betray its owner, and he could feel her freeze by his side.

"Don't move," She whispered in the darkness, her voice full of emotions he hadn't heard for too long. "I won't be able to do this if you move."

Carefully, he relaxed his muscles and lay back on the soft blankets. He didn't quite understand what was happening, but his heart beat fast and the urge to touch her was nearly overwhelming. So close, so real…

"What…" He whispered, afraid to break the spell, to wake up and find himself alone, but still driven by the need to hear her voice again, to be reassured.

"I am a stranger to myself," She whispered. "So utterly lost. But I remember this. I remember the feeling of lying in your arms. It was something like peace, I think."

In the silence, a crystal silence like the endless moment of a wave that stood frozen before it crashed down to drown you in its cold purity, in this moment of silence, Severus felt a shiver overtaking his body.

He didn't know whether it was desire, or fear, or hope. It didn't matter

"More like the eye of the storm," He whispered back, and his voice found the soft tone of intimacy so easily, so naturally.

And there it was again, her laughter, that soft pearling rain that could wash all his bitterness away, could smooth his hard edges without even trying.

He felt his eyes burn and the shivering intensify, and before he could consider whether it was wise or what could go wrong, he had turned towards her and buried his face in her neck.

"I missed you so much," He confessed to the darkness. "I thought I would die from missing you."

He could feel her hand, hesitating, fluttering like a little bird before settling on his head, combing his hair with her fingers.

Combing away the cold and the loneliness.

"I know," She whispered back, tears and rain softening her voice. "But I'm back now, Severus. I'm back."

He felt himself relax into her embrace, felt all the dark corners of his body and mind warm

"I am back," She whispered again.

This time, it was the truth.

0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0

**A/N**: The title refers to a poem by the ancient Greek author Pindar.

Review, please!


	74. A Brief Burst of Sunshine

**A Brief Burst of Sunshine Into the Darkened Soul**

_August 17th_

They were in Paris when she took his hand for the first time. Standing at the shores of the Seine, fascinated by the endless dance of the grey waters, it took Severus a moment to notice how close she stood, the warm feeling of her hand in his.

Then, before he could turn towards her and react, he felt the weight of her head against his shoulder. His breath hitched, and he had to forcibly stop himself from grinning like an idiot.

Slowly, he transferred her hand to his right and put his arm around her, wondering if he was moving too fast and relieved when she snuggled closer to his side a moment later.

Innocent as the gesture might look, to him it seemed as if they had climbed a mountain together. Sure, she was used to his touch by now since she had slept in his arms every night after they had left Hogwarts. But she'd always come to him in the dark, quietly, like a ghost, whispering thoughts and fears into his ears she would never mention come morning.

And when he woke, inevitably, he would find himself alone in his bed and her pacing her own room, fully clothed and awake as if their contact had never happened.

This was the first time she had touched him during day, and he felt like a king, having conquered his fiercest enemy.

"It's beautiful, isn't it," She said now and he nodded, although he knew they were talking about different things. Her eyes were lingering on Notre Dame. His eyes were lingering on her head of honey coloured curls.

He wanted to tell her what a miracle she was, how much he loved her, but she didn't react well to compliments, withdrawing and tensing instead of taking them the way they were meant.

"It is," He said instead, and something in his voice must have told her the double meaning, for she looked up at him sharply, her eyes open and brown like melting chocolate.

Then she smiled, and he felt warmth spreading through his body. It was ridiculous, really, that something as small as a smile could make him feel like this, but then it was Hermione's smile.

"I do not deserve you," She whispered, and he drew her closer.

"Every inch of me," He whispered back, then bent down and blew a soft kiss to her forehead. To his delight, she didn't move away, just sighed contentedly, then returned to her observation of the city.

"I always liked Paris," She whispered.

"I will like it, too, from now on," He whispered back.

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"Any news from Hermione?" Tonks asked as she stepped into the room, still in her auror robes.

"None," Harry replied calmly, greeting her with a nod and then waiting for a breath before he turned his eyes to Draco.

His friend might look nonchalant to the rest of the Order, but Harry noticed that his shoulders had stiffened again, and he suppressed a sigh. Draco hadn't taken Hermione's leaving well, and every mention of her name seemed to make him retreat deeper into himself.

"But I'd be surprised if we heard from her so soon," Harry continued, moving over to the large table where the Inner Circle had started to gather. "It's been no more than two weeks."

"I still don't understand how Severus could just leave us before Halloween," Tonks grumbled, walking over to her chair and nearly stumbling over her own feet. "I mean, he's worked for this harder than any of us."

"Ah, but you are young, Tonks, and are not versed in the ways of love," Fred's grave voice announced from where he had stepped through a tapestry, his voice such an uncanny imitation of Albus' that Harry turned around to him and grinned broadly.

"Good to see you, Fred," He greeted him. "How are the shield cloaks doing?"

"Progressing nicely," George, who had followed his twin into Headquarters, answered in his stead. "There are just a few glitches where the stunning spells are concerned, but if Fred here could concentrate on one thing for longer than ten minutes, we'd have cleared it up in no time."

"Me?" Fred cried out in mock-indignation. "It's you who can't concentrate, lusting after that new shop assistant you hired. Why, it is an insult to every working man's honour how you look at nothing but her…"

A cleared throat stopped them, and they turned around to greet their father, who had luckily interrupted them before their mother had stepped through. Harry's grin broadened. Molly Weasley might have accepted that her sons were old enough to fight, but she certainly wouldn't accept references to certain female body parts.

Harry nodded at the Weasley parents, then turned back to Draco. He was glad to see the quick smile that played around his friend's lips. Trust the Weasleys to lighten the atmosphere every time.

He spent another fifteen minutes on updating the various charts and maps that made the Order Headquarters such an efficient working space. Only when the room had filled up completely did he walk over to the large oval table and take his own chair.

"Albus might be a few minutes late," He announced after greeting the Order members that had arrived last to this Saturday meeting. "But he suggested we could start with reviewing the training situation. If you don't mind…"

He waited for the ready agreement of the Inner Circle, then touched his wand to the piece of parchment in front of him. Duplicates appeared in front of every person seated at the table. Giving them a minute to read, he cleared his throat.

"As you see, both Remus and Moody are highly satisfied with the development. The only thing the group at the whole still lacks is speed, and I would propose that we concentrate on stamina training during the next few meetings…"

And under the proud eyes of Draco, he led the Inner Circle through a Saturday meeting for the first time.

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_August 31st_

The last day of August found them strolling through Rome, hand in hand. Under Hermione's amused glance, Severus had opened the first button of his black silk shirt this morning, his only explanation a sullen look at the cloudless sky.

"So the Roman sun defeats even you," She had commented before returning to a breakfast that, Severus noted with approval, grew larger every day. She was still too thin, but it no longer looked like an illness on her, and said Roman sun had done a lot to make the lines of imprisonment and illness on her face fade.

Still she was in an unusually good mood on this hot day, with none of the sudden panics and insecurities that usually accompanied her every waking hour. This day had been like a day in their past, one of the good days without fighting and danger.

It pained Severus to realize how few truly good days they had had. Always there had been something interfering, something to do or to plan, something to worry about or to expect in uneasy fear.

_We'll have days like this till the end of our lives_, He swore to himself as he looked over to Hermione, noting how young she looked in her light summer dress, how carefree. How beautiful.

"I wonder what the magical community is like here," She now wondered, and Severus' step faltered for a heartbeat. He caught himself quickly, but she had noticed anyway and turned her face towards him now, smiling shyly.

Her smile, fleeting and powerful like a ray of sunlight, still made his heart beat faster every time it appeared. Ridiculous, but wonderful all the same.

"We could take a look, if you were interested," He offered after a moment of silence. "I have polyjuice potion with me."

"Always prepared," She quipped, then, cocking her head in thought, nodded.

Her acceptance surprised him, but he retrieved two vials and offered one of them to her without hesitation.

She had never shown the slightest interest in anything magical during the near month they had been travelling, and he didn't know whether her sudden daringness should worry or please him.

Was it a sign that she had begun to integrate this part of her past into her identity? Was it her curiosity, her eagerness to learn, finally returning to her? Or was it something else, something like a farewell?

"Why now?" He asked after they had ducked into a deserted alleyway and downed the foul tasting potion.

She shrugged, the gesture looking strange on the middle aged woman she had become.

"The sun is out and the day has been good so far. I do not feel afraid. No better time to climb into the saddle again, don't you think?"

Suddenly, she grinned, her old, mischievous grin that had been part of every teasing argument, every easy flirt. He was glad to see it on a strange face, or his reaction might have startled her out of it.

"And since you actually opened a button in public," She teased. "I feel that I have to reciprocate such a daring gesture with equal courage."

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"Master," Lucius whispered with the respect and awe the Dark Lord expected from everyone around him, but his eyes were restless and his usually so immaculate attire was wrinkled and stained.

"Lucius," Voldemort hissed in dark amusement. "Still missing your pet, I see."

Lucius swallowed.

"She was… entertaining, my Lord," He replied, trying for his usual lofty arrogance and failing miserably. "A fascinating little monstrosity."

"Yessss," The Dark Lord hissed, turning the word into a caress of things past. "If she had been born to the right parents… But her blood was tainted."

Lucius nodded, remembering how her blood had glittered red on her soft skin, how she had writhed in the golden light of a candle, how her eyes had darkened with fear and pain, just for him…

"It seems like justice to me," the Dark Lord now mused, ignorant to his right hand's thoughts or ignoring them wilfully. "That our enemies should be brought down by the very thing they have fought for. A mudblood."

"The very fact that she betrayed them will show them how foolish they were," Lucius agreed, though his hand itched with the need to touch her.

"I will take great pleasure in informing the old man who brought about his downfall," Voldemort whispered, something like dark passion twisting in his eyes. "He will kneel before me, along with the traitor and his halfblood toy, and when they see the memory of her serving me they will scream in denial. They will scream a long time before I crush them."

He half closed his eyes and the firelight danced in eerie shadows on his grey skin.

"I will crush each and everyone of them."

Yes, Lucius thought. They would execute Hermione's plan and soon, very soon, this war would be over. His cunning pet would bring them victory, and he would paint her memories in blood on Hogwarts' walls.

Yes.

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_September 2nd_

In Venice, Hermione vanished into her room to stay there for three days and nights, with Severus pacing their living room hour after hour, frantic with worry.

She had told him that it was all right, that she needed to deal with a few things on her own, but after the evening of the first day turned into night and she hadn't stirred he began to hate the nondescript white door that separated them with a passion.

What could she have to deal with, on her own, without food? Why was she shutting him out when he had given up everything to follow her here, to be close and help her when she needed it?

Why was it so quiet in there?

He considered levitating himself up to her window in the hope of catching a glance of her. He tried to remember the spell that would turn walls one-way-transparent. He seriously considered triggering the hotel's fire alarm in the hope that it would bring her out.

In the end, he did nothing. If he stopped respecting her for her own best, it was but a question of time until he would treat her like a child. When she said she needed time, she needed time. Although he still couldn't see why the hell she would need _that _much time.

When on the afternoon of the third day her door opened with a click and Hermione stepped out, freshly showered and changed, he was too tired for a passionate reaction. He simply petted the sofa to his left, a silent offering to join him.

She just shook her head and leaned against the wall, a slightly amused smile on her face. When she said nothing, he looked up to her eyes, a question ready on his lips. What she did next took him completely by surprise.

_You still haven't learned patience, I see_.

Without a thought he was on his feet, rushing towards her, his eyes not leaving her face for a moment.

"How?" He whispered.

She shrugged, as if uncomfortable with the attention he gave her.

"I figured it was time," She answered quietly and walked over to the couch, waiting for him to join her before she sat.

He followed her slowly, his mind reeling. He had hoped for her to regain former knowledge and abilities, but he had never expected her to move to fast, in such sensitive areas. Rebuilding a construction like her mind's defences was a difficult task at the best of times – with the emotions, thoughts and memories still running wild in her head and populating her dreams every night it was downright dangerous.

"This could have hurt you," He whispered, and thought: _Or worse_. The image of his Hermione, huddled in a corner of her room like a wild animal without recognition or intelligence in her eyes still haunted him, although he would be damned to admit that to her.

But she shook her head decisively.

"No," She said. "The knowledge was there, and once I had absorbed it, it wasn't difficult at all. As if my mind somehow… remembered being in this shape. In fact I hope that this might help me deal with…"

She paused, turned away from him and closed her eyes for a moment.

"I am sick of it, Severus," She finally confessed, her voice raspy and tired. "I am sick of having good days and bad days, sick of being treated like an invalid, of never quite knowing who I am and what I am capable of. I want my mind to settle. I want these dreams to end. I…"

She swallowed and let her head fall forward. Brown curls hid her face, but Severus didn't need to see it to read her emotions.

"This is a process of healing," He said softly, slowly. He had said it many times these past weeks. "To rush it unnecessarily could be quite dangerous, and you…"

"I know that!" She interrupted him harshly, her face flushed, her breath quickened. "But I can't stand this anymore! I want to be… someone! Everything must be better than this constant state of in between, this shadowy, murky thing my life has turned into!"

"You must be patient with herself. Those memories can't be simply ignored and your nightmare's are already terrible. I don't want you to suffer more in this than you have to."

"Better a few rough nights than living in this limbo," She stated, and he knew that this would be her last word on the matter.

So he smiled. "There is good company to be found in Limbo," He offered. "Socrates, Virgil, Saladin…"

She looked up to him and the corners of her mouth began to twitch.

"Git."

His smile widened, and he took her hand. They sat quietly for a while, he giving a silent promise and she taking it. Then he shook his head, rose, and offered her his arm to lead her to dinner.

"You were never a patient woman," He said.

"Never," She agreed.

0o0

He woke to an empty bed and harsh breathing in the corner. Older instincts taking over, he forgot the lightswitch by his bedside and reached for his wand, conjuring candles that filled the room with their warm glow.

"Hermione?" He whispered.

"Over here."

Her voice was rough and terrified, but at least she sounded completely lucid.

"What is the matter?"

"Nightmares," She answered shortly, and her breathing seemed to quicken even more. "Memories. I can handle it."

With one swift movement, he was out of the bed and reached for his dressing gown, but her words stopped him in his track.

"No. Don't come closer."

He felt his jaw clench at the dry, utterly tired quality of her voice. This had happened before. Sometimes she would seek him out for consolation when memories assaulted her, but most of the time she would isolate herself from everything, surround herself with a cocoon of silence and darkness as if loneliness made the transformation easier to bear.

And every single time, he wondered if this memory would be too much for her. If this would be her breaking point.

"What is it this time," He asked softly, not because it would help her to talk about it – she seldom ever talked about what she dreamed and remembered -, but because he needed to know for himself, as if this knowledge could reduce the distance between them.

One word, forced out between tightly clenched lips.

"Lucius."

He closed his eyes in resignation. He had waited for this. But with a wishfulness he had never expected to still possess, he had hoped that this particular set of experiences had vanished forever, that she had neglected to tie it into her memory routine.

He should have known her better. Hermione was never anything but thorough.

There was nothing he could say, nothing that could take away the pain that contorted her face and rocked through her every limb.

"I'm sorry," He said anyway and imagined a tiny nod from her.

Then, he closed his eyes and let the memories take him, too.

He didn't know how long they had set together like that, he cross legged on the bed, she huddled in the corner, both lost in their own worlds of darkness and yet both remembering the same sounds, smells and touches of horror. Hermione had told him not to do this more than once, had, in fact, explicitly forbidden it to him, knowing better than anyone else what lurked in the corners of Severus' mind.

But he couldn't bear letting her go through this alone. This way, he could at least imagine what she was going through, could match memory for memory.

The way she had held herself so stiffly that night eternities ago in the Headmaster's office, when she had been bleeding into her robe and yet fought him every step of the way.

The false images their first occlumency connection had fed him, his shock and her cold arrogance.

The awful letter he had read to her in his own haze of fury and her hallucinations. The whispers and cries of her fever dreams when she had first opened to him, not willingly yet, but oh so painful for the both of them.

The ruin of her body on Christmas day, when she had let him care for her and yet had nearly died. When she had first admitted she trusted him.

The first time she had followed Lucius' command after they had confessed their feelings to each other. Shards of a crystal tumbler in the cold fireplace. And her head on his arm, afraid and yet unbelievably courageous.

The day she had left him, cold and resigned, to fall into his hands and change forever.

He let the memories play across his mind, giving himself to them and knowing that Hermione, at the other end of the room, was forced to do the same.

There was so little he could do. And yet, he was here with her, could do at least this much and could take care of her afterwards. The thought of her going through this alone, hidden away without another soul, made his insides go cold.

Older memories awoke and he let them come, those past deeds and sufferings that tasted bitter on his tongue, how he had hurt and had been hurt, how that dark place in his own soul had consumed him for so very long.

He let them come. Until a sound from the other end of the room, the soft rustling of clothes and the changed breathing pattern of a person moving transported him back into the present.

"You did it again," Her voice was raspy and reproachful, and yet he closed his eyes in relief.

"You knew I would," He answered softly, knowing that she could hear the other things, the things he couldn't say, and would understand.

She did.

"Yes, but I wish I wouldn't", She said just as softly. She stood, a hand supporting her against a wall when legs too long in one position nearly gave way under her. Another reminder of her too many near-death experiences. Magic could heal a body perfectly, but Severus had always found that a memory of the wounds tended to linger, no matter how good the potion or the spell.

Hermione's body remembered past hurts, just as her mind did, and it would find ways to remind her of them for the rest of her life. In some way, she was old already.

"I think the rebuilding of my mindscape actually helped with this," She remarked, no doubt reading his thoughts from his face and trying to take his mind off the darkness. "It seemed easier to go through the memories and put them away. More of a sorting than an actual reliving."

"Sorting?" He asked suspiciously and she huffed as if in irritation.

"Really, Severus, you know me well enough not to accuse me of repressing those memories. I _know_ how stupid that would be." Her lips quirked in a small gesture of amusement, perhaps acknowledging the many times she _had_ done rather stupid, reckless things in the past. Gryffindor that she was.

"I did work through them," She continued. "It's just that… When I rebuilt my mind palace, I built a special place for _her_."

"Her?"

She hesitated for a moment, as if not sure how to phrase her words, how to name that part of her that had been _she_, before her memories had gone and returned, leaving her a changed person.

"The Master Spy," She finally chose, and Severus found that he was relieved. So it wasn't everything about her past life she wanted to distance herself from, not her magical heritage, not her abilities, not her friends. Not their relationship.

Only the dark masks and roles she had forced herself to play.

"I know that I am her," She now continued, not noticing the feelings her answer had evoked. "In most ways, at least. I relived these memories and they are a part of me now. But there are some things in my past that I don't want to be part of me. Some things of _her_ I don't want inside my mind all the time."

He shook his head. "But she _is_ inside your mind, she _is _part of you," He insisted, worrying were this was going. "Trying to change that could lead to a disassociation that is, at the best, unhealthy."

She smiled tiredly. "What did we tell Ron and Harry when you started their Occlumency session? It is easier to show than to explain."

Tilting her face up to him, she took his hand and opened their mental connection at the same time.

_Come in, why don't you?_

He hesitated, not sure whether her mind was ready yet to be entered by another person, and even less sure whether he wanted to see what it had turned into. She seemed to read his mind (well, she probably did) and he felt her beckoning for him, daring him to enter. The reference of a mermaid flashed through his mind, reaching out for a lonely fisherman with seductive lure and he couldn't help but laugh.

"Half she pulled him, half he sank," He quoted and, for the first time in too many months, he stepped into the delicately wrought structures of her mind.

The first few moments, while he travelled through the outer defences she had erected around her centre, he thought that nothing had changed, except perhaps for the feeling of perfection, of planned organisation that was unusual even for a thoroughly trained mind.

Defences developed along with skills, and thus most of them looked organic, grown, with patches of improvements here and there, where the Occlumens had gone back to his own work and corrected earlier mistakes, or where a barrier hadn't turned out to be as safe as expected and needed to be improved.

Hermione however had constructed this new set of defences from scratch, with the abilities of a master Occlumens at her beck and call. She had made sure that everything was perfect, that no weakness could remain, and that everything she had learned about the arts of the mind had been used to protect her own.

It made Severus feel jealous for a moment, and in the face of these walls, he was sure that not even Voldemort could break them down, however hard he might try.

Then, he let go of his view over her mental defences, curious what he would see once he entered her mind proper. He turned away from the massive steel walls and towards the labyrinth he had visited for so many times.

Only that this was a different place now.

He couldn't lay a finger on what had changed – perhaps the hedges had become taller, their thorns sharper, or perhaps the texture of the grass was less elaborate, as if Hermione had concentrated on different details than before, as if she had seemed certain things more important and left others in the state of planning, not caring how realistic they looked.

He found the same state of not-change in her mind palace, still the tall, stately building she had originally chosen to represent her mind, inside still a library impossibly large and overflowing with books, pictures, artefacts.

But, and he wasn't even sure how to phrase this in his own thoughts, perhaps some of the grandeur was gone. Some of the playfulness, the pride of a young mind that wanted to show what it could do. Less of the baroque ornaments and more of calm quiet of old stone. Less of the flourish of marble and gold and more of the large windows that flooded the room with light.

And another thing he noticed as he walked the shelves and shelves of accumulated knowledge: Much of what had been hidden in her former mind, limited to her 'Death Eater' set of mind, was out in the open now. He could see books that represented deadly curses, stealth and evasion tactics, abilities she had used as a spy and kept away from her 'normal' life.

It seemed that she had decided to integrate as much as she could from her former life into this place, and seeing what the gigantic library held, he doubted very much that she had built this place to shift into different mind sets like her former palace had.

"Where's the rest?" He asked, dreading an answer that would involve trap doors, cellars, or dungeon rooms. As much as he knew the temptation to put it all away and forget about it, he also knew the risks involved with that kind of repression. He knew that it never worked out, and that it could take the wizard or witch to overcome the shockwaves when their dungeons finally crumbled and the darkness crawled out into their waking world.

Instead of an answer, he could feel Hermione's mind surround him and whisk him away from the library, outside, far enough away to gain an overview of the terrain.

"There," She answered simply, pointing to a meadow to the north of her mind palace.

Snape followed her finger. And stared.

Where before nothing but soft grass and a few blooming trees had occupied her minds pace, there now stood a tower, reminding him of the burghs of the early middle ages. Dark, forbidding, massive stone where her palace was the artful play of light and shadow, with slits instead of windows and a door barred with iron.

The tower stood alone, but a twitch of his finger brought Severus closer, and now he could see that it was indeed connected to the main palace, was connected via thousands of small threads, ropes and bridges, some as fine as spun silk, some large and sturdy enough for a person to walk across. They reached out to the main building with thousand fingers and vanished through the large glass windows inside.

"You see," Hermione stood by his side, clad in a simple red dress, her hair open and spilling over her shoulders. "She is with me, but she is not me. I have her knowledge and her memories and I can enter that tower if I need to. But I do not live there." She shuddered slightly, and her dress darkened to a burgundy that reminded him of dried blood and old wine. "I never want to live there again."

He smiled in understanding.

"It's like a siege tower," He said, watching the structure with curious fascination. "A place you can retreat to when you need a spy's thought patterns and reflexes."

She nodded. "But it doesn't define me anymore."

He sighed and turned fully around to her.

"You'll have to teach me how you did this," He admitted. "It is an idea that never occurred to me."

She grinned. "I'm not surprised," She said teasingly. "After all, you enjoy your persona of the – how did Minerva put it? – dark, brooding hero too much to ever consider giving it up."

"I'll have you know that I did give it up, and quite willingly," He protested in mock-annoyance. "Following your true love away from the battle is neither dark nor brooding, after all."

She nodded again, and her smile broadened, to the old warmth of his Hermione, to passion tempered by pain, youth educated by experience.

"But it _is_ heroic," She answered softly, then cocked her head in a coy gesture. "And I think I will reciprocate by following you back to bed."

He bowed formally, an answering smile on his face, and offered her his arm.

"My Lady," He said and escorted her out of her mind into the reality of their hotel room.

He was right on the edge of sleep when he heard Hermione whisper by his side.

"Severus?"

"Hmm?"

"I think it's time we started training again."

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A/N: Review, please! Next chapter should be up in about two weeks…


	75. Auld Lang Syne

A/N: At long last – the new chapter. We're getting pretty close to the end now, and I'm trying to write as fast as possible. But the last battle needs a lot of planning and structuring, not to mention pretty intense writing, so bear with me. I promise a party of special magnificence…

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**Auld Lang Syne**

Sometimes, it is reassuring to know that certain things never change, no matter how much _you_ change.

In this case, it wasn't reassuring. It was damn frustrating.

"Concentrate, Potter!" Moody barked.

And to consider that Moody hadn't even been Moody when he had treated him like that the first time around! Barty Crouch Junior had really had his act down, Harry thought crossly as he jumped, rolled and fell flat on his face, all in the vain effort of avoiding the red lights Moody shot at him.

"Those could be Avada Kedavra's, Potter! Get a move on!"

_Right. I've once done this with a hurt leg and Voldemort in my back_. _Though the Triwizard finale isn't very high on my list of good moments. Oh, wait, this isn't either_.

But still he jumped even higher and ducked even lower. Not that it would satisfy Moody, but perhaps it would reduce his own embarrassment a bit when he had to face the other members of the attack team. It was hard enough to lead people twenty years his senior without being humiliated in front of them, after all.

Glad for even the few boulders and ruins that were scattered across the artificial landscape of their training area, Harry crouched behind one of them to take a deep breath. The terrain was fashioned after the real landscape of Tintagel – no trees, no walls higher than his knees, enough holes and irregularities on the ground to break both ankles if you didn't keep a sharp eye on your surroundings. Not ideal fighting circumstances, but, as Moody had pointed out, the Death Eaters would have to deal with the same, and they hopefully hadn't taken the time for extensive training.

After another breath and a slash of red light that was far too close to his head for comfort, Harry rolled his shoulders to somewhat reduce the tension in his body and dove for the next cover.

They had been doing this for nearly twenty minutes now, and although it was gratifying to know that he could keep up with this amount of physical stress, he wondered what the point to this exercise was. After all, they all hoped that the battle would be over in less than that time.

He half rolled, half jumped over another boulder, zig-zagging to his right when he felt the heat of a spell just miss him, and winced as his foot stuck into another one of these Merlin-damned holes.

He couldn't do this for much longer.

A quick look to Moody revealed a bright grin on the weathered face and a wand hand stretched out in preparation for the next attack.

Harry cursed. The old auror had way too much fun doing this, and he didn't look as if he would stop anytime close. Not to mention the group of Order members that was clustering around the area, trying to look inconspicuous and failing spectacularly. Harry wasn't sure if it was the need for reassurance or mere sensationalism that turned his training sessions into public affairs these days, but it made the exercise so much harder.

No wonder Albus had simply started wearing purple socks and playing the madman after a century – trying to keep up with all those expectations could drive one batty.

But how to stop Moody without giving up – which was out of the question, Harry had never given up in his life and he wouldn't start now.

_Strenghts and weaknesses, Harry, quickly_, His analytical voice whispered in his mind while he ducked away from another attack, and it was strange how much that voice sounded like Severus.

_Paranoia_, He thought. _Moody often can't decide what's dangerous and what's not, because he smells a threat behind everything._

He chanced a look at the growing number of spectators and groaned when he saw the twins close to Moody, one of them whispering things into the old auror's ear. That wouldn't be fun.

_What else?_ Draco this time, warm and encouraging. Draco himself was not taking part in the training – with Severus' leave, he had become the Inner Circle's expert on potions and was detailed to work with Minerva on the last twists in their magical defences, but after months and months with him, Harry could imagine his concern well enough, his silent support.

_He's slower than others, because of his leg. Especially the moves to the side are a problem, which is why he always acts offensive, keeping the fight as far away from him as possible. _

_And_? Hermione, and the dry humour in her voice reminded him of the last duel Moody had fought against a member of the Inner Circle – a duel he had lost before he had even drawn his wand.

_Easy to provoke_, Harry told himself, grinning at the memory. _And once he's angry enough, he loses all caution._

But he was no Hermione, no master spy that could compete with the best of them and win. He was just Harry, who…

_Oh, come on_, He told himself crossly. _You are still the Harry that took a Mountain Troll in first year and won. You still duelled Voldemort and survived. And just because you have stayed sensibly inside this year doesn't mean that you have to leave the initiative to everyone else! _

While he threw another glance at Moody and his 'assistants', a plan began to form in his mind, and while he still ducked and ran like a rabbit, now his movements were aimed towards a specific boulder, right in the middle of the training area, that would be just perfect as a starting point.

He made sure to zig-zag around a bit first – it wouldn't do to let Moody catch on before he was ready. No one noticed that he had drawn his wand in the shadow of an especially crooked slab of stone, and no one noticed the silent flicks he aimed at the pebbles and rock formations he passed.

Then, still on his way to the centre of the rock formation, he started to make mistakes. Small things at first – a stumble here, a carelessly moved arm there, not enough to be too obvious, but enough to show Moody and those who knew what to look for that he was tiring.

Another look at Moody from the corners of his eyes – the old auror had leaned forward, his one eye glittering with the heat of the battle.

_Come and get me_, Harry thought, adding a trip and near-fall to his growing list of blunders, _I'm a teensy weensy rabbit far away from home…easy prey for you…_

Then, just a few steps from the large boulder he had aimed for, he pretended to lose his balance for good, wobbled sideways and rolled away from the well timed flash of spell light Moody had sent after him, into the safety of the rocks.

Suddenly, it was very silent in the gym. Harry lay totally still, not daring to move a muscle.

_If the enemy is stronger than you, or in a better position, lure him out_, He heard one of Remus' lectures in his head. _Let him come to you. Let _him_ lose his safe position._

Slowing his panting breath, Harry readied his wand. He forced his muscles to relax, carefully stretching those that were prone to cramp after strenuous exercise. He gave Moody another minute, then a minute flick of his wand activated the televisor spell Hermione had taught him. The magic involved was too minute to be detected by Moody, especially with all the wards and transfiguration spells humming around him.

A small spell, but it let him see the group of Order members, still clustered at the edge of the training area, now looking rather anxious, and Moody himself, advancing slowly towards Harry's position.

Now that he had caught his breath, Harry was all too aware of the adrenaline pumping through his body, and of all the memories evoked by the scenario – of his second year and the breathless wait behind a column for the basilisk to find him, the third task and him cowering behind a gravestone, hiding from the Dark Lord – but this was different. It was only a training exercise, and now he knew what he was doing.

Another minute passed, and now Harry could hear Moody as well as see him through the spell. The auror still hadn't called out to him, was still expecting a trap. But his wand was clearly trained towards the large boulder behind which Harry was hiding, with no regard for the rest of the field.

That would change.

Harry gave another short series of flicks, activating the spells he had placed earlier. Suddenly, rocks of all sizes rose from the floor, all across the room. Moody gave a grunt of surprise, but before he could retreat to the safe area of the gym, Harry swished and flicked a second time, and the rocks were hurled by unseen hands towards Moody.

With a grimace of disgust, Moody raised a shield. He was now visibly irritated – not only because Harry was trying to trick him, but also because Moody clearly thought his efforts useless – after all, every wizard could stop a rock slide with just a small spell.

That estimation changed when the first pebble cut through Moody's shield as if it was a curtain of water.

Harry grinned as he saw irritation turn into fury. Such a useful spell, developed and taught by Hermione. It accelerated objects to an extent that made the virtually unstoppable – Moody would have to blast every single rock to protect himself. And now he was angry enough to lose sight of the larger picture.

Without knowing it, Harry bared his teeth, his grin turning into a snarl of triumph.

Then, he charged.

Moody saw him coming, there was no way around that, but with pebbles, rocks and even boulders hurling towards him from every side, and with Harry zig-zagging like a rabbit across the training field, there was not much the auror could do to stop him.

He tried, nevertheless. The jabs of his wand were blurring the air, and the _reductos_ were blasting the rocks into fine dust, but whenever the area around Moody seemed cleared and he turned to attack Harry, another rock would slice through the air and force him back into the defensive.

Harry dodged a rock and then another one, thanking his Quidditch experience that had made evading small objects second nature to him. Despite the bombardment, Moody still managed to target him with increasingly dangerous spells and Harry dodged these, too while his admiration for the old auror went up another notch or too. He himself wouldn't have been able to even think under this rain of rocks.

But the rocks were not aimed at him, and he easily dodged those that got in his way. After all, he had done nothing but dodge, jump and roll this past week. He grinned again and quickened his steps to cross the last feet in a full run.

Time to put the offensive part of his training to use.

He blocked another two spells from Moody, jumped aside when he recognized a _Crucio_ coming his way – Moody had to be _really_ angry by now – and waited for his moment.

There! Two rocks, both large enough that Moody _had_ to blast him if he wanted to keep his head exact, both hurtling towards him from opposite sides. Harry ducked, waited, and when he saw Moody dust them with a _reducto_, he attacked.

"_Expelliarmus_", He shouted, not because he needed it but because he had found that speaking the spells gave them that little extra-power he needed right now.

And as incredible as it was, his plan worked.

Moody whirled around, a block waiting on the tip of his wand, but he was just a fracture of a second too late. Harry's spell caught him head on.

And when the dust from the rock blasts cleared, Moody was spread on the floor, and Harry held the auror's wand in a sweaty, triumphant grip.

For a moment, the silence was complete. Harry grinned broadly, his heart thumping wildly in his throat. His eyes met Albus' and he saw pride shining in them. He turned towards Remus, his first real defence teacher, and saw the older man nod slightly, as if Harry had proved a point to him.

And then Ron was at his side, shouting with glee and tackling him just as he would after a Quidditch match, and Ginny, Fred and George were surrounding them, congratulating and back thumping.

Harry smiled at them all. For a moment, the sweetness of triumph made him forget everything but his victory and he laughed with them, with the sheer joy of it.

But leading was not just about victories, as Draco had taught him so long ago, and so he detached himself from his peers and walked over to Moody, who had unsteadily risen and now watched the group of ex-students with unreadable eyes.

Harry took a deep breath, bowed his head and offered Moody his wand with outstretched hands. It was a very old pureblood gesture, meant to convey respect and admiration for the defeated enemy, a gesture that had been used by warrior wizards for centuries, and Harry could feel the room stirring with surprise at his choice.

Pureblood manners were not often displayed within the Order, but Harry could see Albus' smile of approval from the corner of his eyes, and he could imagine Draco's and Severus' satisfaction.

Moody grunted as he took the wand from Harry and bowed his head in turn, the traditional answering gesture that both accepted the opponent's victory and echoed his respect.

"Well fought," He said, and Harry could see one of his rare genuine smiles building in the corners of his scarred mouth. "So we finally made a warrior out of you, eh?"

Harry grinned.

"Took you long enough," He answered, and laughed when Moody grunted again in mock-irritation.

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October 5th

Berlin was cold and grey, but vibrantly alive. They left their loft near the Hackescher Markt around midday, after an intense training session that'd had both of them panting by the end, and strolled through the still green park, hand in hand, like a couple in love that had nothing better to do with their lunch hour.

They kept their silence as they reached the Spree and let their eyes rest on the stately buildings of the Museumsinsel. Every day they took this path, and every day they were silent while Hermione watched this artificial island of stone, knowledge, and memory.

Only on their first day had she spoken, in a voice that was small with awe and admiration.

"Like Hogwarts without magic," She had said, and he had heard her longing for this place, this haven of museums, colleges and libraries that had the same dreamy, utopian quality as their old school but lacked the old, painful memories Hogwarts would always carry for both of them.

Sometimes, she would lean against him in the circle of his arms, sometimes she would take his hand and sometimes they would just stand side by side, arms resting on the railings that lined the Spree, joined in their quiet thoughts, two little worlds that were connected through love and experience.

Then they would walk on, still in silence, past the Old National Gallery and the ruins of the New Museum, past students and tourists and little bookstands, until they reached the large entrance of the Pergamon museum.

Silence as they crossed the entry hall and offered their tickets to the guards. Silence until they had traversed the antechamber.

When they entered the room of the altar, every day Hermione sighed and relaxed, as if something inside her had come loose, as if all the questions and fears inside her had been silenced. Every day, she turned towards the altar as if it was offering answers.

And every day, Severus would wonder what she saw in these old, half destroyed Friesen that showed the fight between gods and titans, good and evil, captured for eternity by artists' hands.

It was powerful imagery, certainly, and the struggle of god against snake, goddess against titan reverberated inside him as it would inside everyone who had seen battle and lived, the wildness and chaos of it, the savage beauty of fight and victory, of power and death.

There was the battle rage, artfully formed on a goddess's face, the snarl of fury as she drove into her enemy to devour him or be devoured, there the coldness of pitiless slaughter on the face of a triumphant god, and the powerless anger of one that saw his own end coming towards him, waiting for him at the tip of a spear.

There was the sheer terror and beauty of war, captured in white stone thousands of years ago, the ultimate triumph of life as it danced at the edge of chaos, at the edge of death.

He and Hermione had fought like this, many times, and so would their friends and family back at Hogwarts, in less than a month's time.

It didn't help that the titans were formed like snakes.

But there was more to Hermione's fascination with the altar, he was sure of it. It had become the focus point of something bigger than just her past, a question difficult enough that it took more than herself to solve it.

He sighed. Hermione had never been satisfied with tackling the questions she could answer. She always zeroed in on the big ones, and usually they caused her agony.

He could see memories play across her face as she walked along the altar fries, lost in her own world of thought, completely oblivious to the tourists. Watching her so calm in the midst of strangers served to drive home just how much her recent experiences had changed her. Before her loss and regaining of memories, she would never have tolerated unknown threats walking around in her back.

It left him itching to guard her position, eyes swivelling here and there although rationally he knew that they were hidden well enough. But he had lost her once before. Never again would he be careless in that regard.

When a fresh load of tourists entered the hall of the museum, he decided that it was enough for today. Catching her eye, he silently beckoned to her and she nodded, once more turning her eyes towards the face of a particularly striking goddess as if to say goodbye, then joining him in his corner of the room, as far away from the crowd as possible.

"There are many people here, today," She commented, sounding pleased, as if a whole room full of sweating, overexcited tourists with busy cameras was just what she wanted.

Severus gazed disdainfully at them and their inane chatter.

"It's wasted on them, anyway," He judged, and was surprised when Hermione shook her head decisively.

"No," She said. "It's not. It's exactly what they would have wanted."

His surprise must be visible on his face.

"Do you remember the story of Achilles?" She asked by way of explanation. "He could choose between destinies. Either to remain an unknown and live his life peacefully till old age, or to become the greatest hero of all time but die very young. I could never understood why he chose the latter."

She shrugged. "I still can't. Perhaps that's why I became a spy. I never really cared for being remembered before. I just wanted to end this war as quickly and cleanly as possible."

He smiled. "And you succeeded. It doesn't matter whether you'll be present at Tintagel or not, it is your plan that will defeat Voldemort. That should satisfy you, I think."

She nodded, but she didn't look content.

"I thought it would," She confessed quietly. "Back when I decided to go through with it. But now that I'm back, and have become someone else…"

Severus remained silent, just leaned a bit closer to her so that their shoulders touched. Her decision to betray him and go through with her plan despite his wishes still hurt, and he had never tried to hide that pain from her. It was a new scar, right on top of the many old ones he had learned to live with, just as the loss of herself had become a new, still painful scar to Hermione.

But they had accepted each other completely once, scars and all, and every day of the past month helped convince him that they could do it again.

"What does this mean to you?" He finally asked the question aloud he had put to her silently for many days now. "Why this war? Why this piece of art?"

"Because they won," She whispered. "They fought, and died, and won despite terrible losses. And then someone took their story and turned it into a thing of beauty and white marble, a pure work of art. It survived centuries, and it still makes us question who we are today, what we want from life."

She paused, not to consider whether to tell him more but to put her thoughts in order.

"I want that too," She then confessed. "I want my battle. I want my victory. I want to spit in the faces of those who hurt me, and then I want to turn it into a memory and live on in the thoughts of those who love me."

He smiled as her words echoed deep inside him, finding answers and awakening old thoughts. He didn't know that he was smiling fiercely, but he saw his own feelings mirrored in the eyes of his love.

"Is it time, then?"

She nodded, slowly, and he saw that she had finally found her answer.

"Yes. It is time."

0o0o0o00o0o0o0o0o0o

_Hogwarts, October 10__th_

"So what have we got?" Harry asked, trying in vain to blink the tiredness away. He couldn't quite remember when he had slept the last time, and his tongue tasted bitter from the endless mugs of coffee he had downed in the past days.

They were well prepared. He _knew _they were well prepared, even ahead of schedule, but still there was always one more thing to do, just a little thing before he would crawl back into his room and get to sleep.

After all, the simplest thing could ruin an operation. Hermione had told him that many times, always to explain her frantic activities, and he had never quite understood her this well.

Now, standing at the strategy table between Moody and Albus, he knew exactly what she had meant. No matter how hard they worked, there would always be that last shred of insecurity lodged inside his mind, asking him if he had really done everything he could to guarantee the battle's smooth run.

He shared a glance with Ron, who was standing at the opposite side of the table. They had done their part. As unbelievable as the idea had seemed to him two months ago, they had developed a true combat team's rapport. Hours after hours of intense training had turned them into a well-oiled fighting machine, and if Ron still hadn't managed the fine aspects of certain curses, he made up for it with the excellent shield charms that Draco had hammered into him ruthlessly.

Yes, Draco. That was one of the things that had surprised Harry the most these past weeks, the uneasy truce Ron and Draco had developed. Both still sneered and insulted, and would have been outraged at the mere suggestion that they had things in common, but Draco had finally stopped oozing arrogance in the presence of Ron, and Ron had accepted that there _were_ things a Slytherin could teach him.

Harry sighed and rubbed his eyes in the hope that it would bring him back to the matter at hand. Perhaps another coffee would be good…

"The Transfiguration spells are ready, and, yes Moody, they are absolutely reliable," Minerva answered, her brogue thickened by her exhaustion. She and Flitwick headed the team responsible for magical camouflage and defence, and their work had raised Harry's opinion of a Hogwarts education another few notches.

He had never fully realized that Albus Dumbledore was not the only famous wizard working at the school. With Minerva and Filius, Hogwarts could boast to employ the very best in their field, and Severus had been just as good. Harry very much doubted that muggle boarding schools sported this level of expertise.

"We have created space for up to a hundred fighters," Minerva continued, and if her eyes flickered nervously over to the group of former students that was training with Remus, only Harry seemed to notice it. "Only thirty of them will have space on the surface, though. The others will have to be hidden in the caves."

"The spell-matrix we have developed will work hand in hand with the cloaking jewels Severus and Miss Granger placed at Tintagel," Filius Flitwick cut in. He would never be as whole-hearted an Order member as Minerva, but he too had worked tirelessly. "No one will detect us before we want them too, and the hiding places blend in perfectly with the surroundings."

"Good thing Tintagel is as rocky as my grandmother's…" Moody grunted, then interrupted himself when he caught a stern look from Minerva. Graduated or not, she would _not_ tolerate such language in the presence of her students.

"Indeed," She agreed coolly.

"Hestia Jones tells me that the preparations of the healers are on time," Albus supplied, his eyes twinkling gently. "She has enlisted our new Potions Mistress and her apprentice, and our stocks of potions are nearly adequate."

"Training goes well," Moody added. "Apart from those hopeless buggers that will never keep their wand straight, all our fighters are in the best condition of their lives. That goes for the younglings, too."

His gaze took in both Ron and Harry, and he nodded appreciatively. Harry saw Ron blushing to the roots of his hair, but he just nodded calmly, accepting the praise and silently handing it back to his teacher.

"That sounds as if we're nearly ready," He then commented, feeling a warm, buzzing excitement rise in his stomach. "I can't believe we've made it."

Albus' twinkle deepened, and his smile encompassed all of them.

"I never doubted it for a moment, my boy," He said.

Harry took a deep breath and let his eyes travel around the table, over the faces of his comrades in arms. Draco was absent, brewing potions in the dungeons, and there were two other faces absent, but still he felt an overwhelming sensation of home, of rightness.

This was where he belonged. This was what he had been meant to do. With friends and allies surrounding him, being the chosen one wasn't so bad anymore.

"Which leaves only the deployment to be discussed, I think," He said, knowing that the people around this table understood him, "Has Malone given word about the aurors already?"

The mention of Malone brought a general atmosphere of irritation to the group. Malone was the one fly in their soup, the one man Harry would have gotten rid of in a heartbeat. Harry had no idea how the auror managed it, but he alienated people the moment he stepped into a room.

He was glad Malone hadn't stepped into _this _room yet, sparing them all his presence, but that would be inevitable sooner or later. Harry sincerely hoped it would be later

"The auror Headquarters sent us 50 of their best. I chose them myself," Moody said, and his obvious pride in the men and women he'd trained made Harry smile again. "They would have supplied more, but we simply do not have the room for them."

"How many of the Order?" Harry asked, concentrating on the map before him. They would deploy most of the aurors in the caves, from where they could enter the fight when they were needed. They had all felt it safer to keep them as far away from Death Eater eyes and ears as possible. After all, one single whisper could ruin their plans.

"Forty," Dumbledore said, when a tingling from one of the magic tapestries made them all turn around.

"Forty-two," A rich, deep voice announced, and through the golden glow, they could make out the faces of Severus Snape and Hermione Granger

"Well," Their former master spy said, stepping out of the tapestry and tidying her robes. She was still too thin, and her face bore a haggard look, but there was her old determination glittering in her eyes. "We're back."

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A/N:

Sorry about not mentioning this in the last chapter: "Half she pulled him, half he sank" is a line from the poem 'The Fisher' by Goethe ('Halb zog sie ihn, halb sank er hin' for the German speaking part of my readership). The translation is my own, so it might differ from 'official' translations.

This chapter is a little love declaration for Berlin – I hope that everyone who's been there will be able to understand my feelings. There is such a tight cluster of museums, the Humboldt university and Great libraries, theatres and cultural institutions in the middle of Berlin that I just _had_ to use it as a setting for my two favourite braniacs. If you like to, take a look at my life journal – I have posted a few pictures from the Pergamon altar there, plus a few links that might be interesting.

The transition in this and the last chapter was a difficult one, and I hope it worked out the way I wanted it to. I shared your general wish for Hermione and Severus to return before the battle, but for that to work out they needed a period away from the others.

Did it work? Did ya like it? Go and stroke this humble author's ego!


	76. At the End of Things

A/N: A quick update to convince you all that I _am_ back and working on a regular basis again. The next chapter should be up in two weeks at the latest.

0o0

At the End of Things

For one moment, the whole group stood unmoving, as if frozen to the ground, and Severus felt the old, mocking smirk tug at his lips. As dramatic entrances went, this one had been excellent.

He felt Hermione move uneasily at his side and turned slightly so that their shoulders touched, conveying warmth and security.

He felt her relax somewhat, but could still feel the tension emanating from her. After all, she had left here under less than ideal circumstances, and was bound to interpret their reaction as something else than pure, unadulterated shock.

Then, Minerva broke the moment of extended silence, strode forward and enveloped Severus in a brisk, no-nonsense hug that made his ribs crack.

"Good to have you back, you brooding bat of a Slytherin," She announced roughly, then turned to Hermione and administered another embrace.

"You too, my dear," She said and returned to the table and the maps on it as if nothing had happened.

Severus could see widened eyes and flabbergasted faces all over the place, and his smirk widened to a genuine smile. People often forgot that Minerva was a true Gryffindor, emotional through and through, and they also tended to forget that she and Severus had been friends for nearly twenty years.

Her reaction – short, intense, and to the point – hadn't surprised him one bit, but the Inner Circle obviously hadn't expected her to be the one that broke the ice.

Now that it _was_ broken, however, there was no stopping them.

Severus received more cordial greetings and touches than he cared for, and had to discourage several order members from following Minerva's example with _very_ pointed glares.

Minerva could do pretty much what she wanted with him – she had always -, but he would be damned if he allowed anyone else to _hug_ him.

Damned fool in love he might be, but no one would ever accuse him of sentimentality and live.

He chanced a short look at Hermione. She seemed fine, if somewhat overwhelmed, but the raving lunatics seemed a bit more careful with her, no doubt remembering her mental and physical state of not too long ago.

Molly Weasley was, of course, trying to drown her in the mother of all embraces, but Harry seemed to have attached himself permanently to Hermione's side and was efficiently warding off the more vigorous attacks.

Severus' smile widened as he greeted Remus and granted him the privilege of a moderate clap on the back. Yet again, the changes in Harry Potter surprised him.

It seemed that the boy – man – had used the weeks of their absence wisely, stepping out of his friends' shadows for good and finally becoming the leader Severus had never been able to see in him before, though Hermione had always insisted he was there.

He searched for Draco in the crowd, who had been a constant presence at Harry's side ever since Hermione's disappearance, but couldn't find him. Inwardly, he shrugged. Probably busy with potions work, if he was taking his apprenticeship as seriously as Severus hoped.

After all, they were approaching a major battle and there could never be enough healing potions at the ready when fighting was expected.

He searched for other faces, found them, and nodded with satisfaction. No casualties in the high-risk operations that should have been executed over the past weeks. Excellent.

Severus turned again and found himself face to face with Albus, whose obvious pleasure at seeing him made Severus sigh with patient resignation, though it secretly warmed his heart.

"Everything is going very well, Severus," he announced, skipping the greeting for what he knew to be Severus' real interest. "And let me tell you, it is most pleasant for an old man like me to be surprised by the unexpected."

Severus smiled.

"Glad to oblige, Albus," He answered, leaving the 'Glad to be back' unsaid, since he knew it would be understood. "And I really hope you haven't let my carefully organized eyes and ears turn into your usual creative chaos."

"Certainly not," Albus replied with an unashamed twinkle, "Since Minerva took over your work, it should all be in perfect order."

"It had better be," Severus murmured threateningly, but he was so busy looking around that it came out rather half heartedly.

It felt _good_ to be back.

"How is Miss Granger doing, dear boy?" Albus asked and Severus saw that Hermione was now surrounded by her enthusiatic peers, nervousness and pleasure warring on her face.

"She is doing very well, Albus, or she will once we have won the battle and she can close that chapter of her life."

"Ah," Dumbledore remarked quietly, "I confess that I have wondered about that, Severus. So you will take part in the battle?"

"We both will."

It was Hermione who answered, her voice clear and strong over the babble and murmuring. She walked over to them, Harry matching her every step, and the crowd parted in front of her.

Her eyes fell on her and Severus' place at the strategy table, clearly unused since they had left if one judged by the small layer of dust that had accumulated, and she smiled.

"We will fight together," She announced, "And we'll send these bastards to hell."

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Harry could see that Hermione's announcement had caught the attention of the Inner Circle members. As she and Severus stepped up to the strategy table, their eyes scanning the maps and diagrams, those concerned with the finer plans of the Halloween battle took their places again, while Remus and Tonks took it on themselves to move back the Inner and Outer Circle members present for training.

"I see you've nearly finished your preparations," Severus said, his fingers already sifting and sorting through the documents that had accumulated. Harry had to suppress a grin. He'd be very surprised if all of this wouldn't be properly duplicated and filed according to their Spymaster's system by nightfall. "Good attention to detail."

The rare praise from Severus filled Harry with pride, and he could see even Moody to his left puff up his chest in reaction to it.

Hermione and Severus had been directly involved in every stage of the plan, much of the more intricate concepts were their invention, and to see them satisfied with their execution was a bit like having your mother praise the way you made dinner.

Or at least that was what Harry imagined, since his parents weren't alive and Petunia had never praised his dinners in all her life.

"With you two back, we will have a distinctive fighting advantage," Moody now said, his eyes alight with battle fever. "You fought against more Death Eaters than any of us, and you know their weaknesses. If we position you right here in the first attack group…"

His wand touched the strategic map, but before he could zoom in, Hermione shook her head.

"I think we could do much more than that," She disagreed, a grim smile transforming her face into that of a warrior. "Much, much more…"

Harry watched in silence as Hermione and Severus merged back into the ranks of the Order, taking on their old roles with as much ease and implicitness as if they had never been gone.

His chest felt so full he was sure it would burst. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he knew that he was still tired and worried about the battle to come, but all that seemed irrelevant in comparison to Hermione's return, or rather: so much easier to bear.

He didn't expect her to be unchanged by her experiences – in fact the could see the changes in her even now, in the way she stood somehow less predatory, and in the open smiles she shared with Severus.

But the smile she had greeted him with had been full of love, her pleasure at being back open and warm, and her interest in the battle genuine. Whoever she had become in the past weeks, she was still his friend, still his sister in arms – and what more could he hope for?

Their impromptu strategy session took longer than was quite proper, considering that they had only just returned, and when Hermione finally detached herself from the table, the large gym was empty but for their group.

She nodded goodbye to everyone, melted into Severus for an embrace and a kiss (that too was a new development – they had never before shown their affection so openly), then caught Harry's eyes and raised a brow in question.

Harry nodded, added his goodbyes to hers, and followed her through the tapestry down to Headquarters.

For a moment, Hermione stood silently, taking in the room with an unreadable expression, and as if her presence had lent him new eyes, Harry too saw the room with all its memories and changes, as if he had not spent the majority of the past months in here.

Wherever he looked, he saw efficiency, careful preparations and an attention to detail that would even satisfy Severus and Hermione.

He smiled proudly. Now, looking in from the outside, his insecurities didn't seem so relevant anymore. They had done well.

"Where's Draco?" Hermione finally asked into the silence of the room, and with a start harry realized that his friend probably didn't know about her return yet.

"In the dungeons," He answered. "He's been brewing potions 'til his legs gave way. One day I actually had to rescue him from dozing off an falling into his own cauldron."

He chuckled with the memory.

"Shall we surprise him?" He then asked, and Hermione, a strange little smile on her lips, nodded agreement.

"Let's take the long way, though," She added as Harry turned towards the dungeon-tapestry. "It's been ages since I walked the corridors of Hogwarts."

"It is rather creepy without the students," Harry confided and led the way through the tapestry closest to the entrance hall. "Much quieter, though. And cleaner, too."

"So," Hermione said when they had cleared the tapestry and where standing in the huge, empty ante-room of the Great Hall, "It seems I'm not the only one who's changed, hmm?"

Harry met her gaze in surprise. Was she talking about Severus? Or Draco… but she hadn't even seen Draco yet.

She seemed able to read him with the same ease as before, and laughed lightly, touching his cheek for a moment.

"You're so grown up now," She said, and her face shone with pride and pain. "A leader. One they look towards to give them strength and courage. One to lead people into battle and safely out again And you're finally alright with it, aren't you?"

Harry stared at her, aghast and slightly shocked. He had forgotten this side of Hermione, the bluntness she was capable of when something needed to be said or done.

_You've got the emotional range of a teaspoon, Ron. - I've just got to say this, Harry – don't you think you've got a bit of a __saving-people thing?_

"I…just…" He stuttered. He had been aware of these changes, as had the people around him, but no one else had pointed it out that quite openly.

"No, don't justify it," She interrupted a sentence that was going nowhere anyway. "It's great to see you like this, standing among the Inner Circle and being respected as you should be. I just…" Now she interrupted herself and took a deep breath.

"I just remembered the small Harry who came to Hogwarts for the first time, who was in awe of everything and hadn't got the slightest idea about his heritage. And then I see you, and it just makes my heart burst with pride."

She laughed again, and took his arm as they continued their way to the dungeon.

"I'm glad to be back," She finally said, "But I'm so much gladder that you could have done without me!"

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"Draco?"

Draco sighed. He really liked it when Harry came to visit him in the dungeons, but there was just so much to do these days and not enough time to do it.

"Yes," He answered absently, but kept his eyes on the potion, carefully counting the clockwise stirs.

"There's someone here you'll really want to see."

Harry's voice was teasing, and Draco felt better all of a sudden. Trust Harry to lighten his mood. He finished stirring and looked up… and dropped the crystal rod right back into the potion.

He didn't care that the liquid took on a dangerously murky colour and that Harry vanished it hastily.

He just stared. Stared and stared at what surely had to be a hallucination, for how could Hermione possibly be standing right in Hogwarts' dungeons, right in front of him?

He stared. And then, after a moment of silently looking back at him, Hermione walked around the now empty cauldron, stepped close to him and opened her arms.

It felt like coming home.

"Draco," She said, and her voice was so alive, so much _Hermione_, that the first shock finally abated.

"But how did you…when…" He whispered, not sure himself what he wanted to ask.

"We returned today," Amusement played on her lips, "But the decision has been in the making for some weeks now. I just needed to be here."

"So you'll fight."

Hermione grinned. "Definitely."

She paused for a moment, and then her face lit up. She suddenly looked very young.

"But now I want to see your quarters," She demanded imperiously. "We never got around to that, you know? And I remember a very old promise of yours to treat Harry and me to dinner in the near future."

Draco hesitated. He longed to go with every fibre, but he didn't want to be an apprentice who simply dropped everything when convenient.

"There are so many potions to brew," He said slowly, "And Kathryn depends on me…"

Hermione laughed.

"I leave for a few weeks, and everyone grows up and becomes responsible? What a brave new world!"

Draco shared a look with an equally amused Harry, not quite sure what she was talking about. But before he could ask, she continued.

"In case you've forgotten, Severus is a fully qualified Potions Master, and I'm not the worst brewer myself. We'll get everything done on time, I promise."

It was much more than just a promise to brew potions, and by rights it should have reassured Draco.

But while he led his two Gryffindor friends to his quarters and watched Hermione examine his furniture, while he ordered a three-course menu from Dobby and they ate and joked together, Draco felt unease stir inside him.

Hermione had returned. She was herself again. But still, worry gnawed at his mind and he couldn't quite suppress it, found, in fact, that he didn't want to try.

Hermione was back again, and it seemed that she wanted to stay. But Draco had believed that once before, and it had devastated him when he found out he was wrong. He didn't want that to happen again.

"So," He asked, aiming for his old drawl and nearly managing it, "Will we have to get to know you all over again?"

She looked up from her chocolate cake, and something in her eyes told him that she knew what he was truly asking. _Are you really our Hermione? Will you stick with us, or will you abandon us again in the middle of the night? Can I trust that this is real?_

Carefully, Hermione put her fork down besides the cake, and her eyes seemed to cloud over for a moment, as if she was remembering something far, far away.

"Not all over," She then said, and the implicit admission made his insides go cold. "But there _are _changes. I suppose you noticed that already."

She met his eyes, and he could only guess what she saw – the urge to finally get answers, intertwined with the dread of what these answers would bring.

She sighed, unfolded her legs and stood.

"It's like this," She began quietly. "When I first regained my memories, after… after I was gone, I was like a student with a textbook. I had all the knowledge ready at hand, but it wasn't _my _knowledge. Like our beginnings at Hogwarts, Harry, when we _knew _we could do magic, knew that potentially there was no limit to what we could do, but we had to look up every single spell before we could use it.

"I _had_ those memories, but they weren't mine. And intellectually, I knew who I was, what I had done, whom I loved, but I couldn't connect to this knowledge. It felt like… like I was two different persons, the Hermione I ought to be and the Hermione I really was, and it all frightened me senseless."

She paused, took a deep breath, and only now seemed to notice that she had been pacing quickly up and down in front of them. She chuckled, and something in her face seemed to soften.

"But the past weeks with Severus gave me time to… assimilate those memories and come to terms with them. Basically, I did what I am best at," She grinned, "Learn textbooks by heart. But it was easier doing it somewhere else, and I don't regret leaving."

Draco's eyes darted to Harry as they often did these days, and he saw that his friend was nodding slowly, understandingly. But then Hermione's second leaving hadn't been that much of a shock for Harry.

In Harry's life, dear ones had always been absent one way or the other, and he had learned to tide himself over such periods years ago. Draco just didn't know how to do that, although he had tried hard enough these past weeks.

Before he could control himself, a tired sound escaped his lips, and he pinched the bridge of his nose in irritation. These Gryffindors had ruined him – he couldn't hide anything from them, even if he wanted to.

"I am sorry, Draco," There was honest worry in Hermione's voice, and for a moment Draco wondered if he was really sounding that needy. The thought filled him with self-loathing. "I know I hurt you, all of you, but there was no other way for me."

"Sure," Somehow, his voice had turned into an ugly, raspy thing in the past minute. Draco just wanted to close his eyes and go to sleep.

"I'd better leave," Harry suddenly announced, quietly and with all the discretion he had acquired with Draco's help. "There are some details to discuss with Albus, and then I really need to get a good night of sleep."

He kissed Hermione on the cheek and softly rested his hand on Draco's shoulder for a moment before using the magical tapestry to the Headquarters. All of a sudden, Draco was alone with Hermione.

He was behaving utterly ridiculous, some part of his mind knew that: Finally he had Hermione back and both his friends were safe in the castle, the day they would be free from the constant threat of Voldemort was approaching, and here he was, sitting quietly like an idiot, nursing a wound that was insignificant compared to all they had been through.

But he couldn't help it – forgiveness had never been his strong side, and forgiveness mixed with a guilt that still overwhelmed him whenever he remembered her thin, helpless body twitching under the force of Cruciatus was even more impossible to deal with.

"I hurt you," Hermione finally said into the silence. "And perhaps I went about all this the wrong way. I can consider that, now that I'm slightly different than Hermione the master spy. She however, she was so set on this path, her mind so fixed on keeping her loved ones safe that she never really considered how much she hurt them by what she did."

He chuckled, although the sound came out rather weak.

"It's weird when you talk about yourself like that, as if you were another person."

"In some ways I am," She admitted softly. "There's both less and more to me than there was to the old Hermione. I could never live her life – I don't think I'm strong enough, but I'd never be so single-minded, either, so ruthless concerning the needs and wishes of others. I am sorry."

He wasn't sure what she was apologizing for – the way she had changed or the way she had been before, but her words made the guilt inside him rise up like a huge wave.

"I am the one who should be apologizing," He answered dryly. "I did terrible things to you, Hermione. I…"

"I know," She interrupted him calmly. "Severus told me. That wasn't your fault."

"You can't know that," He _wanted_ to accept her absolution, but at the same time he knew it was too easy. She shouldn't forgive him for what he was, what he had done. "You don't remember."

"No," She agreed easily, "But I do remember what I planned should such a situation ever arise."

She paused, and he wondered how it felt to re-examine those thoughts, whether it hurt her or filled with wonder.

"I assume you saw me, and your first impulse was to rescue me on the spot, right?"

He nodded silently.

"But I entered your mind and thus activated the triggered _Obliviate_, leaving you the carbon copy of your father, not minding the little torture session one bit."

"I enjoyed it," He whispered. "I _wanted_ to do it."

She shook her head. "No, you didn't," She disagreed, her voice leaving no place at all for doubt. "In fact, you didn't want to do it so much that _I_ had to activate the spell to stop you from rescuing me. You are no more responsible than you would have been under _Imperio_."

"But the way I acted – what if it's simply part of who I am?"

"It isn't," She said forcefully. "I _know_ you Draco. And I know what you've done this past year, how much you've achieved. You are a _good_ person, and I can't thank you enough for all the things you did!"

"Thank me?" He asked, and his old bitterness rose to the surface. "For what? I've done nothing in comparison to you. I've been hidden away in this old castle, brewing potions, putting nothing of the things I learned to use while you…"

But Hermione, it seemed, would have none of this.

"Yes, Draco, thank you," She whispered, "For taking care of Harry. For staying by his side when I couldn't. For questioning all your beliefs and changing in a way most people couldn't! I…" She paused for a moment, clearly searching for words, not because she wasn't sure what to say, but because she wanted to take her time and get it just right.

"I never really understood how you felt before, Draco," She finally continued. "Everything was always so clear to me, my side in this war, my place, my identity… I was a muggleborn and Harry's friend, and that left me no choice anyway. But now I know what it feels like to be torn between lives, and I think I understand."

"Torn between lives…" He repeated slowly. Yes. Perhaps that was a good description for what he had felt every single day since having befriended Hermione and started to spy on his father.

His life had been divided into oppositions that day, one of before, one of after, one public, one private, and despite their being such a huge, insurmountable abyss between the parts, their edges had always been murky, undefined.

He had used his education as a Slytherin to teach Harry, and his aristocratic attitude to help Hermione sell the prophecy to Voldemort. Spells and techniques from the Order had kept him safe on his visits to his father, and Hermione, Harry and Severus had found ways how he could ingratiate himself with Lucius even further.

A mad life. A torn life.

And in less than a month, the two halves of his life would go to war against each other.

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_Hogwarts, October 18__th_

_And Malone has entered the building,_ Harry thought with a sinking feeling_._

For the first time in a week, the knowledge of Hermione's return wasn't enough to lighten Harry's mood. Inviting the coordinator of the battle on the aurors' side into their main training centre had been inevitable, but as Malone made his way through the gym, insulting and aggravating an impressive amount of Order members, Harry found that he really wished there could have been another way.

He was just so used to the peace and trust he usually found in this room, the knowledge that everyone in here was united under a common cause and could be called a friend of some sorts, even if he didn't know everyone as well as Draco or the Weasleys.

To have an atmosphere-leech like Malone swaggering around, staring rudely at the Order members and openly sneering at their facilities, was like a bucket of cold water emptied over everyone in the room.

It was unavoidable. And so they'd have to deal with Malone and his attitude, somehow. Intellectually, Harry knew that. But when Malone's eyes fell on Draco, who was duelling his favourite opponent Minerva McGonagall, and his face reddened, and he directed his swagger towards the duelling platform, Harry was quite sure that Malone wouldn't survive the first hour of their meeting.

He just wasn't exactly sure who'd try to kill the auror first, though he wouldn't be surprised if he did it himself.

"Who do we have here?" Malone sneered, and if Harry hadn't been filled with dread at the forthcoming confrontation, he would have rolled his eyes in irritation. "And I thought this club was _exclusive_."

Harry stiffened at the double insult, but before he could react, Minerva had stepped to Draco's side.

"It is," She said. "Limited to those we trust absolutely." Her stern gaze made it abundantly clear that Malone did not belong into that category.

"So you trust a Malfoy," Malone repeated, and the unveiled enjoyment in his gaze infuriated Harry. He took in the auror's red face, the provocative line of his shoulders and the way he stood, as if he owned the place, and suddenly he understood that Malone was actively spoiling for a fight, that he wouldn't let them be until he had gotten a confrontation. Or was intimidated sufficiently to give up, but Harry couldn't really see that happening.

"A Malfoy," Malone mused, then took an exaggerated look around, lingering especially on the congregation of red heads that were watching him quietly. "I wonder if everyone here is feeling that trusting towards him."

From the corner of his eyes, Harry could see Ron stepping away from his family and towards the duelling platform.

_No, Ron_, He thought with growing despair, _Not today. This is not the place and the time for it!_

Prior to this, Ron seemed to have developed a grudging acceptance of the Slytherin in their midst, but Harry had never been sure how much of that was due to the complete acceptance of Draco by every other Inner Circle member.

Malone's provocation and its implications however might be seen as an opportunity by Ron, and when had one of the Weasleys ever passed by an opportunity to vent steam?

"Ronald Weasley, right?" Malone was trying for charming now, and as Ron was climbing the steps to the platform with his back to them, Harry had no idea if the tone was working on his mate. One could never say with Ron. "You've got something to say about this?"

"Yeah, I have," Ron said quietly. He turned around, and Harry saw that he had come to stand at Draco's left, in a mirror position to Minerva. All attention was now fixed on the platform, and Harry knew that this would crush Draco if it went the wrong way.

Harry felt his whole body thrum with tension, his legs twitch with the urge to step between Ron and Draco and stop this before the situation could spiral out of control. It was a deeply emotional response, and rationally he knew that his intervention would only make things worse.

If Draco or the Order got the feeling that Draco needed Harry's protection, that he was only here because Harry held his hand over them, the results would be devastating. Not to mention that Harry was more than just any Order member. In the past weeks, he had led the Inner Circle along with Albus, and if he got involved in this, he'd give Malone too much power over their whole structure.

Better to keep this as unimportant as possible, a skirmish rather than a full blown power play. But still, the stony expression on Draco's face that had to hide acute dress made him itch to go over there and end it.

"Draco's one of us," Ron now said, so quietly and matter-of-factly that it took Harry a moment to understand. "He may be a Malfoy and a Slytherin, but he's also a member of the Order of the Phoenix. And we trust him."

Only Draco's extensive training kept Harry from gaping at Ron. Malone shrugged, disappointed that he hadn't triggered the explosion he'd hoped for, but he was totally unaware of what exactly had just transpired.

_Ron_, _trusting_ Malfoy?

Harry turned towards the rest of the Weasleys (Fred and George were grinning broadly, while Molly Weasley was nodding very decisively, and wasn't that just as weird?) and back to the duelling platform, where Draco stood very still, Minerva at his side.

His old teacher was smiling at Ron, and Harry could have sworn he saw her mouth 'ten points to Gryffindor'. He met Ron's eyes, and his former best friend produced a shrug and a lopsided grin.

'Hey, even Weasleys can grow up' it seemed to say, and Harry grinned back so hard his mouth hurt. Ron might have betrayed them once, but as far as Harry was concerned, this repaid it. Suddenly, the last vestiges of doubt about their comradeship in battle vanished.

By the time Harry redirected his attention on Malone, the older man was already halfway through the gym on his way to the strategy table. He was still spoiling for a fight, but somehow Harry didn't care that much anymore.

They were the Order of the Phoenix. They'd stick together, no matter what the choleric auror tried.

He took a deep breath and prepared himself to join the strategy crowd, but barely had they avoided this first catastrophe when the next one approached.

Hermione stepped into the room, and all sound stopped.

Malone took one look at her, and his face twisted into an ugly grimace of satisfaction. It seemed he had found his next prey.

She greeted friends and acquaintances with nods and smiles and didn't miss a step when her eyes fell on Malone's bulky form. But then, Harry was sure she'd known he would be there, since it had never been Hermione's habit to enter a room unprepared.

"Auror Malone, I presume," She said politely as she took her place at the strategy table.

"And you must be Hermione Granger," Malone answered, and the way he spoke her name turned it into something ugly. "Returned from your flight of fancy, I see."

Harry closed his eyes in exasperation. Malone knew about Hermione, and Severus, and much of what the two had done.

The auror office had demanded full disclosure of details, and the fact that no information would leave the Order's headquarters unprotected had enraged them. So instead, they had sent Malone, who had agreed to both the triggered _Obliviate_ and the _Fidelius_ placed upon him, and who had expected to learn everything there was to know about the business of the Inner Circle.

It was one of the few things Harry had argued over with Dumbledore, argued fiercely, in fact, but in the end he had given in, although with a leaden feeling in his stomach.

So Malone knew a lot. He knew the members of the Inner Circle and their functions. He knew the name of their Spymaster and their master spy. He knew that Hermione had nearly been killed and that they had faked their death. And he knew that Severus and Hermione had vanished sometime in the midst of August.

Even for someone not trained as an auror, it probably wasn't that hard to deduce the additional details they had _not_ told him.

And now he was targeting Hermione with this knowledge.

Hermione gave a short nod, not bothering to answer the question, and busied herself with the maps of the battlefield. Obviously she had decided that non-confrontation was the best way with Malone. Or, Harry thought, remembering Hermione's rather anti-climactic fight with Moody back when the Order had found out about her spying, perhaps she had decided to goad him along, although he couldn't imagine what use that would be.

Be it planned or unplanned, Malone took the bait.

Half on his way to the strategy table, he eyed Hermione up in a way that was both suggestive and offensive, and his face took on a sly look.

"I'm surprised you even let her near sensitive information."

"I can assure you, Mr Malone," Albus said in a tone that suggested calm and consolation, "That we all have absolute confidence in Miss Granger."

"Yes," Malone murmured, loud enough so that everyone could hear him, "A Malfoy and a Death Eater mistress. The most trustworthy people on earth."

Harry hissed in anger, and even Albus seemed slightly shocked. Hermione however, still pretended to notice nothing at all.

Not the reaction Malone had hoped for.

"As far as you informed me, that girl is mentally unstable," He sneered. "She should be interred in St. Mungo's, not allowed to risk the outcome of this very important battle!"

"I can assure you that Hermione is anything but unstable, Mr Malone," Albus disagreed, still calm but now with an edge of irritation to his voice. "And she is a most valuable addition to our strategists. Everyone around this table welcomes her, and so should you."

The auror, now directly in front of the table, on the opposite side of the Order members, sneered at Hermione, who was still completely ignoring him. "I don't see why," He said. "That she got herself laid by Lucius Malfoy is no sign of strategic genius to me."

Harry saw Hermione stiffen and Dumbledore's eyes narrow in anger, but before anyone could react, a foot collided solidly with the side of Malone's head, sending him sprawling to the ground.

The resounding thud silenced the entire room. Malone hadn't made a sound, merely passed out immediately.

"Ennervate," A silky voice said and slowly the auror sat up, blinking owlishly up to his attacker.

Severus Snape, standing over him like the angel of revenge, not even breathing hard.

"What the hell…" Malone whispered, still frozen in shock.

"Mr Malone," Dumbledore interrupted, his blue eyes twinkling. "You remember Severus Snape, our Spymaster? Perhaps I should also mention that he is also a close friend to Miss Granger.

"Snape!" Slowly and with obvious pain, Malone managed to scramble to his knees and then rose to an unsteady standing position. "What the hell were you thinking…"

But although Severus was staring down at the auror as if he had suddenly discovered something slimy on the floor of his potions lab, his attention was clearly fixed on someone else.

"May I kill him, dearest," He asked lightly, like a boy who was asking his mother for a cookie.

"Oh no, please don't, Severus," Hermione answered in the same, playful tone. "You will get blood all over the floor."

"But I'm sure Jane would clean up after me," Severus complained in a tone that on anyone else would have sounded whiny. With him, it held a strangely menacing quality.

"No," Hermione said, now sternly. "No killing inside the house on weekdays. You know the rules, Severus."

Malone was slowly getting back on his feet, overdoing the huffing and groaning in a way that reminded Harry of Draco's Buckbeak-injuries in third year. He looked from Severus to Hermione and then to Albus, as if he expected the old wizard to defend his honour, but Albus just twinkled at him absent-mindedly.

Malone's face reddened even more, and for a moment Harry wondered if this was Severus' and Hermione's secret plan: To give the obnoxious man a coronary and be rid of him forever.

But unfortunately, Malone was made of sterner stuff than that. And he still hadn't gotten the point, a fact that amazed Harry deeply.

"So the hussy found herself another protector," He sneered, wincing when a movement reminded him of his injury. "I don't think that makes her anymore…"

This time, the booted foot did not connect with his head. It stopped, inches away from an impact that would have broken at least Malone's nose.

With an expression that was bordering on the comical, the auror was staring at the surprisingly small foot not quite connecting with his head. Slowly, his eyes travelled down the leg that did not even tremble despite the exertion this move cost, and up again to where Hermione was examining him, a cold smile on her lips.

"Severus learned that kick from me, Mr Malone," She told him. "And the fact that I did _not_ end that move although you gave me every reason to should tell you everything you need to know about my mental stability."

Slowly, displaying an amount of control over her limbs that astonished Harry, she lowered her leg. But one look to her face was enough to tell everyone that the danger wasn't over yet.

"I would really like you to make a decision, Mr Malone. You can either rethink your attitude towards me and this operation now, or accompany me outside, where we will solve this problem in the most efficient and long lasting way I can think of." She smirked. "Or, if you would prefer not being beat to a bloody mess by a woman, I am sure Severus would be happy to oblige."

"More than happy," Snape agreed quietly.

Harry wasn't sure what did it - the knives both were wearing openly, the implicitness with which they talked about beating him up, or the palpable sense of danger that emanated from the black clad figures.

But the unthinkable happened. Malone shut up and deferred to them.

"That won't be necessary, I hope," He said, trying to put self-confidence into the words and failing spectacularly.

But Hermione wouldn't let him off the hook that easily.

"Glad to hear it," She said. "Does that mean we can expect you to act like a professional from now on?"

Infuriated, Malone puffed up his chest and stood straighter, obviously deciding that he couldn't let such a comment pass.

But then, something in Hermione's face changed. Her eyes seemed to darken and she shifted her weight slightly. Suddenly, she didn't look like the new Hermione at all but like the master spy of old, graceful, predatory and utterly dangerous.

She smirked, drawing up her lips just enough to bare her canines, and her hand slid towards the hilt of a knife as if from its own accord. And still the light in her eyes, the tilt of her head seemed to encourage Malone, _daring_ him to try something, telling him just exactly how much she was looking forward to fighting him.

Harry shivered. Even in her active spy days, he had seen this sight of her only once or twice. She looked as if he she would gladly rip out anyone's throat at the slightest provocation.

And Malone backed down.

"A professional, yes," He said faintly, obviously unable to believe that he was accepting the claim of dominance from a teenaged girl, but unable to help it at the same time.

"And we will have no more of these displays to look forward to?" She questioned sternly, a nearly maternal air around her now.

Malone recognized the insult in that as clearly as everyone in the room, but it seemed there wasn't enough fight in him left to rebel once more.

"Certainly not," He said, trying for assertive and managing only resigned.

And Harry simply couldn't help himself. He inched forward until he came to stand by Hermione's side, and, leaning over so that only she could hear, he whispered into her ear:

"I'll help you hide the body."

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A/N: I was having fun with that!

And now there are only two chapters and an epilogue left, people. I'm busy writing the battle at Tintagel, and if you want to motivate me (come on, those who've never reviewed before, this is your very last chance to influence the writing process!), just drop a review!!


	77. A Power the Dark Lord Knows Not

**A/N**: This is the second to last chapter, dearest readers (not counting the epilogue). It is a strange feeling, to be so close to the end finally. But before we are done, there will be lots of things to tie up. Some of that happens in this chapter. But you should be aware that the next update will take some time, and that this chapter ends with a cliffhanger. So don't blame me if you read this now and then have to wait for the continuation! Proceed at your own risk!

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**A Power the Dark Lord knows Not**

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"_Well, that's it then, isn't it?" Harry said. _

_The other two stared at him. He was pale and his eyes were glittering. _

"_I'm going out of here tonight and I'm going to try and get to the Stone first."_

"_You'r__e mad!" said Ron. _

"_You can't!" said Hermione. "After what McGonagall and Snape have said? You'll be expelled!"_

"_SO WHAT?" Harry shouted. "Don't you understand? If Snape gets hold of the Stone, Voldemort's coming back! Haven't you heard what it was like when he was trying to take over? There won't be any Hogwarts to get expelled from! He'll flatten it, or turn it into a school for the Dark Arts! Losing points doesn't matter any more, can't you see? D'you think he'll leave you and your families alone if Gryffindor win the House Cup? If I get caught before I can get to the Stone, well, I'll have to go back to the Dursleys and wait for Voldemort to find me there. It's only dying a bit later than I would have done, because I'm never going over to the Dark Side! I'm going through that trapdoor tonight and nothing you two say is going to stop me! Voldemort killed my parents, remember?"_

_He glared at them. _

"_You're right, Harry," said Hermione in a small voice._

From J. K. Rowling:_ Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone_

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And then, on the afternoon of October the 30th, everything was done.

There was nothing they had forgotten, nothing they hadn't planned, no last-minute adjustments they hadn't made.

On the eve of the battle, Severus and Hermione suddenly had time on their hands.

"I can't believe it," Hermione whispered, her body resting on their favourite sofa and her head in Severus' lap. "One way or the other, I've been waiting for this day for seven years now. And tomorrow it'll be over."

Severus chuckled. "And what should I say? It's been more than twenty years for me, love."

She looked up at him with sudden fierceness.

"Too long," She said.

"Too long," He agreed.

Their words echoed through the room, and if some ghosts of the past joined them, neither chose to comment on it.

"Do you regret it?" Hermione asked after a moment, her words encompassing the complex thing his life had been.

Even knowing that the answer should be easy, he hesitated. There had been so much suffering in his life, so much bitterness, and yet his sacrifices had saved many more lives than he had ended, and his work as a spy had been necessary to bring them to this point.

He could see that now, thanks to her, just as he could now see beyond the last twenty years into a future warm with hope.

"No," He answered quietly. "Not if all is said and done."

He waited for her to question his words, but then remembered that she, not in words but deeds, had made the same choice only a month ago. She could have stashed those memories she had regained away, could have become a person entirely different from the old Hermione Granger and turned her back on this world of violence.

Instead, she had assimilated her past life and had returned. She might have built a separate tower for the master spy, carefully detached from the rest of her mind palace, but still she had let her back into her life.

"And of course," He added with a smile. "If I hadn't stuck around Hogwarts spying and teaching, I'd have never met you."

Hermione laughed, a soft, delighted sound, and looked up at him with loving eyes.

"You may hide it well, Severus Snape," She teased, "But deep down you're the worst romantic I've ever met."

He huffed in mock-exasperation.

"In a long career of insults, I'll have you know that I've never been accused of that," He protested, only to mirror her smile a second later. "If I am indeed, it is only your fault, Hermione."

"There, see?" She said, satisfied, and pointed a finger at him. "Romantic. Utterly romantic. You just can't hide it."

"Again," He teased back, "Your fault, my dear."

She laughed again, then closed her eyes and relaxed into the soft touch of his hand on her hair.

They slipped into the silence of easy companionship, each of them lost in their own memories and thoughts, until Hermione spoke again, a new tone in her voice.

"Are you worried?" She asked, and something told him that she wasn't referring to the battle, but to the time after that, their amorphous and undefined future.

"Why should I be?" He asked. "We are both resourceful and qualified for any number of activities. Since we're also the best fighters of the lot, there's no question that we'll survive and harvest the fruits of our labour."

She stared at him. "Pompous and not in the least modest," She remarked. "It balances out the romantic, I guess."

He chuckled, then fell silent, knowing that she wasn't finished yet.

"I really don't want to die, you know?" She confessed in a small voice. "I am looking forward to our future. But at the same time, it worries me. Tomorrow, most of what I've known will end. Something new will begin, and I don't know whether I will manage to be a part of it. How can we leave behind us what happened? Where will we go? What will we do?"

"It doesn't matter," Severus answered, feeling a deep wave of warmth and happiness rush up inside him. Hermione Granger wanted to live. With him. "We will be together, after all."

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October 31st, Halloween

early afternoon

It wasn't even midday yet, but already the Order of the Phoenix had begun to gather.

Tonks and Kingsley, who were to coordinate the battle from the aurors' side and to keep a sharp eye on Malone, had held their last council of war with the Inner Circle shortly after breakfast.

They had left about an hour ago, armed with two-way mirrors that communicated with Albus and Moody, and with that same grim determination Draco had seen on every fighter's face for the past week.

And now, long before the agreed time, Inner and Outer Circle members had started to appear in the spacious rooms of Headquarter, sometimes solitary, sometimes in little groups, talking, sipping tea and coffee, using the maps and diagrams to once more rehearse the battle plans, or simply sitting on one of the numerous sofas and chairs, unwilling to be alone on this day of days.

There were many more here than just the 42 wizards and witches chosen to battle at Tintagel, and as Draco let his eyes sweep across the room, the sheer number of people involved in their plans filled him with awe.

The people that had gathered were as different in appearance and behaviour as their roles in the approaching conflict – hardened fighters, healers, researchers, even people that would deal with the fallout – and with the press.

And every single one was united under the one purpose. Every single one risked his station in life and his existence just by being here. Every single one had been willing to undergo the strenuous procedure of _Fidelius_ and triggered _Obliviate_ to protect their plans.

Draco didn't even know all of their names, although he had encouraged Harry to have a talk with every man and woman involved in the operation. But he himself preferred to stay in the shadows rather than make contacts with Gryffindors and Hufflepuffs and people he wouldn't even have sneered at in his former life.

They always reacted to his name and face, and the guarded expression of mistrust that invariably clouded their faces hurt every single time.

But this – standing in the half shadow of a slightly drawn curtain, watching and waiting – this was nice. It was _Slytherin_, enough so that no one could accuse him of sentimentality, and yet it was a way of belonging.

Perhaps it was ridiculous, but keeping to himself this way, watching Harry make his rounds through the room, the Weasley twins goad their mother to distract her from her worries, his Potions mistress talk to Severus in low tones and Hermione converse with Moody, watching all this, Draco felt as if he was doing something. As if he was keeping his loved ones safe.

Half an hour passed and refreshments, provided by the house elves, popped into existence. Draco found even the thought of something to eat daunting, and by the untouched look of most of the food most Order members agreed with him.

There was a sudden lull in the conversation, a change in their strange but close knit dynamic, and Hermione detached herself from the group she was mingling with and stepped over to Draco.

Smiling but saying nothing, she took his arm.

He felt her warmth, her steady presence by his side, and was thankful for it. In the past weeks, their relationship had changed yet again, in ways Draco never could have expected but was thankful for nonetheless.

She had been right when she had told him that she finally understood. Before, it had been her drawing him into her Gryffindor world, of which she was so much a part that she couldn't even imagine her life any different, no matter how many secrets she kept.

Now, they had both been on the outside of all this, looking inside and wondering whether to enter. And both had chosen to become part of it, despite the fact that there were other things waiting for them on the outside, things that were more than tempting.

This was also what distinguished them from Severus, the only other Slytherin in the group, Draco thought. Severus had been forced to make the same decision, not long ago, and had, without a moment's hesitation, chosen Hermione. He had made it very clear over the past weeks that he was only present because of her, and that he would leave again should she want him to.

Draco wondered if he could ever become close enough to a person to make that kind of decision. A year ago, he would have thought it impossible. Now, he could very well imagine it.

He saw Harry walking towards them, tense but determined, and smiled a greeting to his friend.

"Are you alright?" He asked softly, and Harry nodded.

"Frightened to death," He answered. "But other than that, I'm fine. You?" His gaze took in both Hermione and Draco, understanding in his eyes. For him, this night was the aim he had worked toward for many years, but he knew that it was more complicated for Draco.

And even Draco wasn't sure what went through Hermione's head when she thought of fighting her fellow Death Eaters. Of seeing Lucius again.

"I want this over with," Hermione answered quietly, "So that we can finally go on with our lives."

"Sounds like a good plan," Draco agreed lightly. They all knew how the others felt. No need to draw it out into the open. _I've made them both Slytherin enough to know that_, he thought, satisfied.

Then his eyes caught Dumbledore, walking slowly but steadily into their direction, and he gave Harry a sign.

"Time for the inspirational battle speech, I think," Draco commented.

"God, I hate those," Hermione whispered. "If no one's got any idea, I memorized _Henry V._ in primary school."

Harry sent her a slightly disbelieving look.

"Sometimes, I simply forget just how weird you are, Hermione," He said, and they all laughed, glad that they could joke together even in the face of battle.

Dumbledore greeted all of them with a smile and a nod, but his face was shadowed, and Draco wondered what he was thinking, what memories were passing before his eyes.

Was he seeing his own battle against Grindelwald? The first Order? Or was he remembering the childishness of their faces not very long ago, their simple awe at the Sorting Feast (and although Draco would never have shown it, he _had_ been in awe of everything), and wondering how it could have vanished so quickly?

"Harry," Dumbledore said softly, gesturing towards the host of Order members. "If you will?"

"Will what?" Harry asked with total innocence, and Draco was very tempted to reach out and smack him.

"Address the troops, as one says," Dumbledore said.

Harry gaped.

"Me?" He asked, as if that was the most unthinkable thing in the world, and Draco marvelled that Harry still hadn't understood his role in this completely. "Talk to them? But _you_ are the leader of the Order! Why should they want to listen to me?"

"I may be the Order's official leader," Dumbledore acknowledged, twinkling and smiling, "But _you _are the one they follow. They don't want the words of an old, tired man tonight. They want you."

"But…" Harry looked truly frightened now, "I'd have no idea what to say…"

"'Cause you do, mate," Ron, who had sidled up to them, said. "You've heard it often enough. Speak after me: 'This is it. The big one. The one we've all been waiting for.'"

Something in Harry's face softened, and Hermione chuckled with appreciation. Draco, having no idea what they were talking about, assumed that it was a Gryffindor thing. The words were certainly small and simple enough for Gryffindors.

Harry's eyes searched for Hermione, then for him. They nodded together, giving both permission and encouragement. But it was Severus' nod, curt and decisive, that seemed to make up Harry's mind.

"Right," Harry said, and despite all the control he had over his face and body by now, his nervousness showed clearly. "Right."

He brushed back his hair, baring his scar in the process, and squared his shoulders. Then, he stepped into the middle of the room.

It was as if every single Order member had waited for this moment, and who knew, Draco thought, perhaps they had. In the time it took Harry to take a look across the room and its inhabitants, they quieted down.

All eyes were fixed on their Chosen One.

"Today," Harry began, speaking slowly, as if to himself, but with a clear, carrying voice. "We are going to fight Voldemort. The most evil and dangerous wizard of all times.

"He was vanquished once already, when I was just a baby, on this very night 17 years ago. It wasn't done by you, and it wasn't done by me, although general opinion seems to be that it was."

He took a deep breath.

"My mother was the one who stopped him, who saved us all, and she did it because he threatened someone she loved more than her own life. She shouldn't have been put in that position, just like we," His eyes took in Ron, Draco, and Hermione, "Shouldn't have been forced to bear the burden this time around. But she was, and she made a choice.

"Not to simply give up and step aside, and let those she loved die, but to fight. Even if it killed her. I know she didn't regret it."

Another deep breath.

"Last time, sacrifices saved us, and the celebrations were without cause. The wizarding world was glad to have someone else do the fighting and pay the price. For many years now, they have preferred to close their eyes and wait for someone else to take their stand, a saviour, a chosen one. They have believed against reason that a child would save them, and if it had paid the price for it like his mother, they would have called it destiny."

He paused, and his eyes took in every single one of them, resting, perhaps, a bit longer on his friends, but making sure that they understood that his words were not just for them.

"But not you. No one forced you, but still you have made a choice. It wasn't your destiny, but still you decided to take a stand. You won't allow someone else to make your sacrifices. You will fight, together with me, and when we kill Voldemort – and we _will_ _kill him_– it won't be because of destiny, or a prophecy, but because _you_ stood up and refused to let someone else fight for you."

He smiled, softly, hesitantly, and the innocence on his face took Draco's breath away.

"I am glad I won't be alone tonight. I am glad that you will be at my side, every single one of you. But more than that, more than anything else, I am glad that there won't be any sacrifices tonight, that there won't be any mothers or children dying in our stead.

"This time, _we'll _do the fighting, together. This time, we'll earn our victory."

The silence that followed was absolute, and then cheering broke out among the younger Order members. Draco could see that Minerva was smiling broadly and Dumbledore's eyes were blinding with pride. Severus and Moody nodded slowly, as if to give their blessings to Harry's words, and Hermione to Draco's right had glittering tears slowly make their way down her cheeks.

He reached out and took her hand, and as he felt the answering pressure, he understood – not rationally, but emotionally - that for the first time in his life he was exactly where he wanted to be.

This was his battle. For the first time, Draco belonged to something with all his heart – not just to a cause or an ideology, but to a family.

And even if it should end tonight, even if he should die, he wouldn't turn away from it. This was his choice, his path. And these were the people he chose to go with.

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The night air was cool and damp and coated Harry like a second skin. He chanced another look around – appearing nervous wasn't the problem, since _everybody_ would be nervous in this place and at this time, but keeping his training-honed reflexes under control was.

He had never been at Tintagel during the daytime. If the Dursleys had had the slightest interest in cultural artefacts, they certainly wouldn't have taken him along, so he had no experiences with ancient ruins in general and Tintagel in particular.

But at the moment, the place ranged at the very top of his creepiness charts, right behind the cemetery of Little Hangleton.

Another look at Ron showed his friend standing grimly in the darkness on the other side of their little makeshift-altar, looking just as nervous, but also just as determined as Harry.

The memory of Little Hangleton filled Harry wtit dread, and for a moment, he saw the green light again, heard the hissing words – 'kill the spare'.

But Ron knew what was waiting for them, and had been trained to survive it. He wasn't Cedric Diggory. He wasn't even Sirius.

And Harry was just glad he didn't have to do this alone.

Suppressing the need to feel for the warm, invisible presence at his side, Harry cleared his throat instead.

_Stick to the script_, Moody had hammered it into them until they had mumbled it during their sleep, _Whatever happens, stick to the script_.

"You think she'll come?" He asked, and was answered with just the perfect smile – a bit afraid, a bit nervous, but full of Gryffindorish confidence.

Despite their training, Harry was surprised. Ron had become really good at this sort of thing. Who'd have ever thought it?

"Sure, mate," Ron answered. "It's Hermione, right? When has Hermione ever been late for anything? I guess she just had some problems sneaking out of her parents' house."

"Yeah, that'll be it," Harry agreed readily. "She was never very good at breaking the rules, after all."

It was _so_ hard not to search for possible listeners, but he wouldn't be able to find them anyhow, and too much interest in his surroundings would seem strange. He was, after all, a moody, self-absorbed teenager.

He had to suppress a grin. Time to act the part.

"I really hope she turns up soon," He grumbled. "It's getting cold out here."

"Yeah. Why couldn't we have used Beltane," Ron grumbled.

Harry shuddered, telling himself firmly that it wasn't nerve. It _was_ cold out here, and the duelling robes he wore under his cloak weren't exactly warm.

It felt strange wearing them, and for a moment he longed for his Quidditch clothes.

"Perhaps we should light the fire. Prepare the ritual and all that?"

Ron shrugged. "Fine by me," He agreed. "But if we do something wrong, it'll be your fault. I won't have 'Mione tearing into me like in Potions."

Harry grinned. "It'll be my fault, anyway," He agreed. "You know how she is."

And boy, how glad he was that he didn't have to do this with Hermione gone, or presumed dead.

Again, he suppressed the urge to search for that presence by his side and thought he felt a reaction, the tiniest of mental touches, soft and steadying.

He lit the fire under the cauldron with a flick of his wand. _Here we go_, he thought.

And then, suddenly, Voldemort was there, his red eyes glittering with triumph.

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The world pressed down into a single, brilliantly dark moment and he was there, at the cliffs of Tintagel, standing tall to the right of his Lord, his silver-blond hair whipping out at the night air.

The cool mask that was his true face caressed his cheeks and protected his skin from the cold.

Lucius Malfoy felt the anti-apparation- and portkey-wards slam into place. He sucked in the night air with a triumphant hiss and caressed the smooth length of his wand.

For a moment, he could imagine his pet by his side, blazing with cruelty and darkness, her eyes burning with battle lust.

"Soon, my Lord," He whispered, words slithering up his throat into his master's ear. "Soon, we will shatter those who dared defy you."

_I will carve your name into the flesh of the world, my love. I will break their bones and grind them to dust. I will erect you a memorial from their skulls._

It took the Potter-idiot seconds to even notice that they were there, and when he did, his eyes widened in shock. He had never deserved her, this would-be hero and his plebeian blood-traitor friends. Before the night was out, he would know it.

They had built something that remotely resembled an altar out of rocks and pieces of wood, a pitiable little shrine that awaited vows of friendship that would never come. _He_ would build her a temple.

"Harry Potter," The Dark Lord now whispered, and Potter paled in fear. "So we finally meet again. I must say I am a bit disappointed in you, falling into my trap so easily after all these efforts to keep you safe."

If possible, Potter turned even whiter.

"Trap?" He whispered, "But how can this be a…What have you done to Hermione, you bastard?"

Lucius could feel the other Death Eaters move closer towards Potter, as eager to see the boy's defiance crushed as he was, and he gestured for them to keep a fighting distance – it wouldn't do to underestimate an enemy, not even Potter –, but his eyes were fixed on the two pathetic boys and their ridiculous altar.

Soon, soon they would know…

"Nothing at all," The Dark Lord whispered, clearly amused, and it was almost the truth. "I didn't even have to ask her, Potter. She came to me, your clever little mudblood, offering your head on a silver platter. She was most eager to serve me."

"You are a liar," The Weasley brat shouted. "Hermione would never do that!"

"Where is she then, if you are telling the truth?" Potter asked, aiming for brave and failing quite a bit. "Wouldn't she be here with you?"

The Dark Lord laughed, and Lucius felt a stinging pain in his chest. And wasn't the Potter brat right? Shouldn't she have been here with them?

"She outlived her usefulness and Lucius broke her," His Lord hissed. "Just as you have outlived your usefulness, Potter."

"Actually, my Lord, that is not quite true."

Lucius felt his heart pound and his blood whisper in his ears. Had his feverish dreams invaded reality? How could he hear that voice, now and here? Was he going mad?

And then she appeared, in the darkness between Weasley and Potter, throwing off an invisibility cloak, her face glowing in the fire of the altar like gold.

She met his eyes, and she was everything he had thought lost, beauty and wildness and grace and darkness, and he thought his heart would burst.

How could that be? How could she live and not be at his side? How could she look at him as if she wasn't his, as if he hadn't possessed her in every way possible, as if he hadn't marked her as his own? How could she be standing at Potter's side?

"Lucius," The Dark Lord hissed. "Explain this!"

But he couldn't, not if his life depended on it, he couldn't even look away from her or force his mouth to move.

In all the world, there were only he and Hermione, his mudblood and his love, the woman he had lost, the woman that had finally returned to him.

Then, she smiled.

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The darkness was like a warm embrace, welcoming Hermione as one of her own.

She was very aware of Harry's and Ron's presence by her side, very aware of the Order members hidden among rock formations and in ditches, aware of the night air and the potion slowly bubbling on the altar behind her.

But all that was like a thin curtain, draped over the deeper reality of her mind.

In the outside world, she was sitting on the cold grass in a position she could hold for hours without losing mobility, not moving a muscle, the invisibility cloak hiding her from the world.

But inside her mind she was busy at work. Cables, strings and bridges snapped lose as she disconnected the main palace from her siege tower. With a flick of her wrist, books flew from one place to the other as the knowledge she would need tonight gathered behind the thick walls of her master spy personality.

With something akin to pain, she let her eyes linger on the splendour of her mind palace. Then, she pushed the palm of her hand downwards against the earth, and her chateau sank underground, deep into the earth, hidden from view and safe from attacks.

She wouldn't allow anyone to touch this part of her anymore. Not Voldemort, not Lucius, not even her own side. Tonight, she would be the master spy, cruel and merciless and violent, but she wouldn't allow this night to taint her future and the peace she had finally found.

She smiled and felt the robes on her body change, turning into black dragonskin and bespelled silk. She felt the reassuring weight of knife-sheaths on thighs and arms, and the smooth hilt of her wand-knife in her hand.

She was ready.

A flick of her hand opened the doors to her siege tower, another flick closed them behind her. Heavy bolts of iron and wood settled into place. The inside was dark, only lit by a red haze that filtered through the narrow window-slits, and although she had known what it would look like, Hermione felt overwhelmed for a moment.

Her books, those precious representations of knowledge and experience, had turned into weapons. These walls were not lined with paintings and bookcases. Axes, swords, knives and crossbows filled the space from floor to ceiling, every weapon imaginable, all designed hurt, to bleed, to kill.

And she felt both at the same time – the profound sadness of her peaceful self, and the sharp delight of the master spy.

Then, she let go of the peace and the weapons flew into the air, surrounded her with promises of pain and retribution, whispered their bloody promises into her ears.

She smiled coldly and chose the long, thin rapier that represented her _Legilimency_.

The hunt was on.

She felt them coming long before Harry and Ron, the thrumming tension of magical energy compressed into the point of a needle, and her outside eyes opened wide to take in the night of battle.

There they were. At least a hundred of them, carefully deployed over the full length of the cliffs to keep anyone from escaping or throwing themselves into the ocean. The Dark Lord wanted to kill Harry with his own hands.

Some part of her was listening to Harry's and Ron's shocked reaction and the little play they put on to deceive Voldemort, another part was watching the dark shapes that were moving between the Death Eaters, slowly and gradually making their way to the front.

But most of her being was concentrated on the Death Eaters' Inner Circle and the two men leading them – her former master and her former torturer.

Lucius' face was invisible behind the dull white of his mask, but she could imagine it all too well – the smooth, sophisticated planes of his forehead and cheeks, the piercing blue eyes, the cruel and yet decadently soft mouth. She shuddered under the sudden assault of memories. Even though he wore a face of beauty, Voldemort's right hand man was just as much monster as his Lord.

For a moment, she felt panic rise inside her – was she mad, to face them in battle willingly? Why hadn't she stayed away, in safety, where their eyes and hands couldn't touch or hurt her? How could she hope to stand against what they had done to her?

But then she remembered.

Severus' hand, cradling her head like something precious, his smile and his eyes, dark and unreadable to anyone else, but a library of thoughts and emotions to her. The Order's happiness at her return and their willingness to let her reclaim her life. Draco's trust in her, the soft truth of his smile. And Harry's speech, Harry's wonderful speech that had told her what she had always known for herself and yet never fully understood.

And she knew.

This was what had been meant to be. Not because it had to be done, or because she was a sacrifice.

It was her right. She had earned this. She had never been their slave. She had never been a victim. In the silence and the deceit she had conquered them. In the game of minds and power she had played against them, and played to win.

They couldn't hurt her. They could never hurt her, not in the ways that mattered deep down. _She _was the hunter, and _they _were the prey.

This night was the culmination of all she had done, it was her triumph.

Tonight, she would collect her tribute and see them kneel at her feet.

"Actually, my Lord, that is not quite true," She whispered, purred, and the shudder that went through Lucius turned knowledge into truth.

Now, the time was right. She rose from her knees and threw off the invisibility cloak, stood tall and straight like the queen she had been among them. Her eyes met those of Lucius, those of the Dark Lord, and the freedom she felt made her blood sing in her veins.

Finally.

Then, she smiled.

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All of a sudden, the dark cliffs were teeming with Death Eaters.

There were more than they had expected, more than any not-paranoid leader would have taken along for such an operation, and Remus was once again profoundly thankful that they had listened to Hermione and Severus and prepared for the worst.

He resisted the urge to stretch his legs as he lay crouched against the cold rocks. This was a critical moment. If even one Death Eater noticed something out of the ordinary now, they would be gone before the Order could move.

They depended entirely on Hermione, Harry and Ron. Their ability to distract Voldemort and his followers would decide the outcome of this battle. But still it was terrible, watching the two boys standing all alone, just a few metres away from the most dangerous wizard of their century.

But they weren't alone, and as Hermione suddenly appeared in their middle, a visible movement of surprise ran through the ranks of the Death Eaters.

Remus saw two dark shadows moving forwards among the black-clad crowd, using the distraction of Hermione to close in on the Inner Circle. Remus flicked his wand and the Order's disapparation wards sprang up, impossible to sense behind the wards and spells the Death Eaters had already used on the area.

Another spell alerted the aurors and Order members hidden across and below Tintagel's rocky surface, and then Remus' part was done for the moment.

Now, he could only sit and watch.

"Lucius, explain this!" Voldemort, obviously enraged, demanded, but Malfoy seemed unable to answer. As predicted, Hermione's appearance had thrown the Death Eaters' formation into chaos, and Voldemort's right-hand man was too distracted to reign them back in.

Remus could see fury tightening Voldemort's face, and he couldn't help but shiver. The Dark Lord looked ghastly in the moonlight, his face something from a nightmare and his power tainting the air around him.

Remus' eyes darted towards the three young Order members that were still standing motionless, facing the most evil wizard of their time, and something like awe rose inside him. He couldn't imagine confronting Voldemort like this. He wasn't sure if he'd had the courage.

But Hermione, Harry and Ron certainly had. And when their master spy finally spoke, there was no trace of fear in her voice.

"I am afraid the only person you'll get answers from, my Lord, is me," She said, and Voldemort's eyes narrowed with rage.

"You…" He hissed.

He raised his wand, and suddenly, Hermione was on her knees, her head thrown back from the force of Voldemort's Legilimeny-attack. A gasp escaped her lips and filled the silence of the night. A trickle of blood ran from her nose, shockingly red on her pale skin.

Remus knew the plan, he knew it by heart, but still he felt panicked worry for his former students and now friends. What if Voldemort was too strong for Hermione to withstand? What if he ripped her mind apart like a cotton veil, leaving nothing but madness? What if their battle ended right now, with all their hopes turning to ash?

He watched and waited in silence, united with everyone on the plateau in this surreal moment of anticipation. Time trickled to a stand still.

There were the Death Eaters, a sea of darkness and white masks, still unaware of the enemies surrounding them. There were the Order members, hidden away behind transfigured rocks and inside illusions of hills. There was Lucius Malfoy, staring in shocked silence at the scene unfolding. There were Ron and Harry, standing frozen besides their friend, as if their presence could lend her strength.

And there were Voldemort and Hermione, connected in the silent struggle that held the rest of them spellbound, he towering over her, she on her knees twitching slightly under the onslaught of his invisible attack.

All was still. The outcome seemed inevitable. And then, something changed.

Hermione's eyes closed, and her face relaxed. When she opened them again, there was a new light in them, a fire of determination that burned through Voldemort's spell and the power it had over her.

Her head lowered. The muscles of her shoulders and jaw tightened. Her fingers closed into fists. She shrugged, and it was as if the motion burst unseen chains.

She lowered her head further, like a bull preparing for attack, and Remus could hear a low, threatening growl form deep in her throat.

Voldemort's hand flew to his nose, and when he raised it to his eyes, blood was marring the white of his snake skin. Shock spread through the ranks of the Death Eaters.

And Hermione stood, feet planted firmly on the ground, not just withstanding, not just resisting, but taking control.

"I must confess I'm disappointed, my Lord," She said, and, unbelievably, her tone was that of mild amusement. "I had expected more from you than this pitiable effort."

"You…" Voldemort hissed again, but this time, the word was an expression of surprise, perhaps even fear.

"Yes," She whispered, but so utterly quiet were the wizards and witches congregated on these cliffs that every last one of them heard her. "I. Hermione Granger, the mudblood you threw away like garbage."

She took a deep breath, and as if in answer, Voldemort's head snapped to the side, a hiss of pain on his lips.

"You didn't expect me here, did you? You thought you had broken me, left me to your servant to be killed. And yet I survived. Yet I am here, returned from the dead, besting you on your own ground."

She raised her chin in defiance and met his eyes for the first time, brown burning into red, two enemies on equal footing. The air was crackling with power. Remus found that he had forgotten to breathe.

"And let me tell you something, my Lord, some wisdom from death's other kingdom," She said, her voice now ringing clear in the cold night air.

Then, she smiled, and Remus felt a profound relief that she would be fighting on _their _side tonight.

"You're _so_ fucked."

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A/N: looky there *giggles* - cliffhanger! Now I'll go and write the battle, shall I?

Review!


	78. Now and in Time to Be

**A/N**: So here it is, finally. This chapter has been surprisingly hard to write, and not only because real life's been insanely busy. But it's finally here and before you all race off to read, here are three little things for your notice:

I'll start writing the epilogue as soon as I can, but since I plan it as a longish story, the update might take long. It _will_ arrive, however.

There's no sequel in sight yet, mainly because I simply don't have time. But because I can't simply leave this story behind, here's the deal: Many of you have mentioned scenes they would have loved to read. Tell me about them, or about any other scene you missed during or after the story, and I'll try to write them as short stories (I guess you could call this a sort-of-challenge).

Potterficweekly is discussing the 'Lioness' in their podcast at the moment. So if you're interested in other opinions about this fic, google their site and download the podcast!

And now here's the last chapter:

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**Now and in Time to Be**

0o0

_Too long a sacrifice_

_Can make a stone of the heart._

_O when may it suffice?_

_That is Heaven's part, our part_

_To murmur name upon name,_

_As a mother names her child_

_When sleep at last has come_

_On limbs that had run wild._

_What is it but nightfall?_

_No, no, not night but death;_

_Was it needless death after all?_

_For England may keep faith_

_For all that is done and said._

_We know their dream; enough_

_To know they dreamed and are dead;_

_And what if excess of love_

_Bewildered them till they died?_

_I write it out in a verse -_

_MacDonagh and MacBride_

_And Connolly and Pearse_

_Now and in time to be,_

_Wherever green is worn,_

_Are changed, changed utterly:_

_A terrible beauty is born._

From W.B. Yeats: _Easter, 1916_

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She felt his touch in her mind, icy cold and yet oddly hesitant. This was a situation he couldn't understand – and Voldemort feared what he didn't know.

In the safety of her siege tower, the master spy bared her teeth in a snarl of a laughter. She would have to draw him in deeper, present him with a challenge he simply couldn't refuse.

As if she only now noticed their mental contact, she made her body shudder and her head snap back. Inwardly, she hastily erected a defence barrier, right atop the set of false images that truly protected her mind, so flimsy and full of gaping holes that it was obviously the work of a beginner. But then Voldemort had never known that she was an Occlumens.

The barrier, clumsy and glaringly obvious, caught his attention just as she had expected, and the sheer impertinence of her effort turned his wariness into rage.

Gone was all caution, all suspicion. He dove into her, claws of steel ripping apart her fake defence, and she cried out, fell to her knees and let her head hang limply from the attack.

She felt blood coating her nose and lip, felt the Death Eaters' stare on her and Harry's and Ron's presence by her side, and then she let go of her outer body, knowing that she would need every ounce of strength and wit to win this battle.

The echo of her own pained gasp still in her ears, she raced down, down, past Voldemort's icy presence, past her barriers and traps, into the very foundations of her mind, where her magic lay hidden like a dormant beast. She tickled it awake, and as it roared in anger at the intrusion, she smiled. Time to show Lord Voldemort what he was really up against.

As she melted into her core, became one with the shields that protected her mind and her secrets, she was for the first time grateful for what had happened to her. She could not have stood against him with her old shields. No normal Occlumens could stand against the Dark Lord and win.

But she was different now. Her mind had shattered and had been rebuilt by a master. Flawless. Complete. Without weakness or inconsistency. No one had ever possessed such shields. She would show him what she could do.

With pinched fingers, she selected images from her mind, secret talks with Severus, intimate whispers with Lucius, things not even the Dark Lord himself had known about his servants. She made them thin and transparent, like ghosts on the wind, and sent them out to search for him, to find him, dance around him and confuse his senses.

She was one with her shields now, and so she could track his mind-self across the flat expanse of her first layer, could see him sift through the harmless images of a schoolgirl, searching for an explanation of her presence in vain.

Then, her messengers found him, reached out to him, and he tried to catch them, only to have them fall away, sink down into the endless well of her mind. She opened all defences for him, let him follow the images down, down, past her mind garden, past her hidden secrets and thoughts, well protected by invisible barriers.

He didn't even notice them. All his concentration was fixed on the images that could explain everything to him. He was ruthless, single-minded in his pursuit of knowledge and power, and it was this weakness that she exploited now.

He thought her defeated, thought the thin barrier she had put up everything she would throw against him.

In her tower, she smiled. In her tower, she readied her real weapons.

With a sweeping gesture, she encompassed all her mind, all those moments of pain and fear and panic, the humiliation she had suffered at his feet, the despair she had experienced in his presence.

She gathered them.

Once, only a fraction of her past had been enough to teach Ron how to hate. Now, she would use everything against Voldemort.

Down he raced, ripping through thoughts and memories and falling deeper into the darkness of her mind, and all the time she hammered her memories, forged them into spikes, sharp, cold, unforgiving and harder than anything man or wizard could make.

Carefully she layed her trap, lined it with blades and hooks and spikes, surrounded it with steel and clad it in blackness to conceal her true purpose.

But she couldn't trust in his blindness. Powerful as she was, _he _was the Dark Lord, and she would not leave the fate of this battle to his ignorance. She had to distract him.

Leaving a trickle of herself inside her protections to keep up appearances, she rose to the forefront of her mind in a single, fluid motion, rising while she felt his mind chasing after the treacherous images, deeper and deeper into the caves of her thoughts.

She raised her head, and while her eyes remained fixed on Voldemort's burning gaze, she only needed her peripheral vision to keep track of the Death Eaters, to see them shocked and yet spellbound by her unexpected appearance, to see Lucius slowly backing away from them, his face twitching like a broken clock, and to see two other dark shapes advancing towards her and the Dark Lord.

She saw awareness in his eyes, too. He had noticed her rise to the surface, and without even thinking, part of him had followed her up. Without even thinking, his natural mistrust had caused him to return a fraction of his mind to his body, just enough to guard.

Just enough to weaken the presence in her mind.

And still, the larger part of him was inside her, was chasing down after those memories, trying to see who had betrayed him, trying to know why his well laid plans had been interrupted.

Claws of steel ripped into her mind, hands of fire brushed aside whatever lay in their way.

She knew she wouldn't be able to keep this up, not for long, but then she wouldn't need to. All she needed was a minute, just this one, precious moment…

Closer, closer, deeper, deeper… now!

Voldemort's real body stiffened as she sprung the trap, and in his eyes she could see the sudden knowledge of what she was doing.

It was too late. The hardened spikes of her memories slammed into him, riddling his mind-self with painful wounds, grabbing him with hooks of pain and panic, while all around him, steel walls closed in seamlessly, leaving no nook or cranny to escape.

She growled as she tightened the defences, and as she set the cage moving, her body rose to his feet as if on auto-pilot, only half conscious of what she was saying or doing but determined to give the Death Eaters the show that would distract them for the few moments the others needed.

Inside his cage, Voldemort's mind-self howled with anger. Outside, a red trickle appeared against the white of his skin. She had drawn first blood.

She dragged him down with her, down into the black waters of her despair, down where the monsters roamed, and no claws of his, no magic or power was strong enough to withstand the thousand hooks that had caught him.

_He_ had hardened those spikes that now held him. _He _had forged them with his cruelty and his madness, and there was nothing in his mind that could stand against his own terror.

When the waters reached his face he jerked away, convulsed upwards in a last refusal to give in, and she _slammed_ her determination down on him, a plate of steel and light and pushed, pushed… until the waves closed above his head.

Upwards she raced, reconnecting with her nose and ears and tongue, and she couldn't help the smile dancing on her lips as her eyes found the body of Lord Voldemort, empty for now like an abandoned house.

"You're _so_ fucked," She whispered, giving the codeword she had set, and all around her, the cliffs exploded into well-rehearsed action.

0o0

With another flick of his wand, Remus sent word down to the aurors, who would need several minutes to join the fight. He felt every muscle in his body vibrate with tension as he watched two of the Death Eaters not too far behind Voldemort spring forward and draw their wands. One of them began firing curses towards his fellow Death Eaters, while the other began to mutter an incantation.

Suddenly, a glowing barrier sprang up around the Gryffindors, Voldemort and a small portion of Death Eaters, surrounding them like a bell jar and leaving no exit. It looked magnificent, much more impressive than when Filius and Minerva had described the effect to them, and the crystals that anchored it held such strength that not even Voldemort could bring it down quickly or easily.

_Well done_, Remus thought, and as if on cue, two of the Death Eaters removed their masks and hoods, revealing the faces of Draco, who was still decimating their enemies with cold-blooded accuracy, and Severus, traversing the base of the magical bell jar with long strides, Death Eaters dropping left and right to his spells.

Remus' eyes flickered once more towards Harry and Ron, who had by now given up any pretence of being surprised or frightened and instead joined the fight. They and Draco had positioned themselves around Hermione to shield her from any spell that might fly her way or break her concentration.

For Hermione, silent as she stood there, was fighting harder than any of them, making sure that Voldemort was incapacitated for the moment.

Another glance assured him that Severus had nearly reached the frozen form of his former Lord and he nodded, convinced that the young Order members would be safe.

Then, Remus jumped to his feet and cancelled the cloaking spell on their hiding place. Kingsley, Moody and Tonks at his side, he ran to meet his enemies, one last time.

0o0

Behind the golden glow of their barrier, Harry could see Order members and Death Eaters engage in battle. He saw Remus race past and caught a glimpse of Albus and Minerva, fighting back to back, but most of his attention was fixed on Voldemort and the Death Eaters they had shut in with themselves.

It had been the only way to do this, and though Harry had liked this part of the plan least of all, he now saw that he needn't have worried. With Draco and Severus fighting alongside them, the dozen or so Death Eaters were an easy match.

But then they had been surprised, he thought as he got one with a _Petrificus_ and bound him with another flick of his wand, and they had no idea what was happening to their Master.

Harry executed a perfect cutting curse and dropped to one knee to avoid the answering _Avada Kedavra_. Even to him, who knew exactly what was going on, Voldemort looked strangely frightening, just _standing_ there like a frozen puppet.

But that would change, Harry thought with a dark smile and picked out another Death Eater. Voldemort wouldn't remain standing much longer.

The Death Eaters inside their magical bell jar were down to four when Harry felt Hermione to his left shudder.

"Now!" She cried out hoarsely, and suddenly, Severus was by Voldemort's side, killing his two guards with barely a thought.

Everything seemed to slow, every movement sharply pronounced against the background of battle, as Severus swung his wand in a wide arc, slicing through skin and bone, blood spurting from the sudden wound like a fountain.

Where the Dark Lord's wand hand had been, only a stump stretched out threateningly towards Hermione. Severus had cut it off like a reed.

Bile rose in Harry's throat as he watched the twitching hand, wand still clenched in useless fingers, and he suddenly remembered Pettigrew's hand, so many years ago, sinking into the cauldron like a dead thing.

Voldemort screamed, rage and pain echoing in his voice, and Hermione screamed alongside him. Her body was trembling wildly now, blood trickling from her nostrils and reddening her lips.

"Hurry," She whispered. "I can't…"

"Severus!" Harry bellowed and the black-cloaked man whirled around, struck out and threw the hand.

Harry caught it easily, his stomach turning at the slimy texture of Voldemort's skin, and reached their little altar with three hasty steps.

He dropped the hand into the cauldron and watched the liquid inside turn a deep dark red.

"Right," He whispered to himself. "Let's do this."

0o0

Severus saw Hermione fall to her knees in pain, saw Harry drop the hand into the anchoring potion and begin the chanting, and turned back around just in time to see the light of awareness return to Voldemort's eyes.

He raised the Dark Lord's wand, 13½ inches, yew, phoenix feather core. A once beautiful wand, but now twisted and corrupted like his owner.

He saw Voldemort's eyes widen, saw the stump of his arm twitch as if he tried to grasp it.

And Severus snapped it in two.

The sound was oddly loud, and for one moment, the chaos around them was gone, leaving only him, his former Lord, and the remnants of his broken power.

Then Voldemort howled in pain and anger, a sound more fit for a beast than a wizard, and for the last time, Severus felt the pains of what could have been echo inside him.

"Severus!" The Dark Lord roared. "I will kill you for this!"

"No, my Lord," Severus answered calmly, feeling oddly sad. "I don't think you will."

He struck out and his fist hit Voldemort's nose with a most satisfying crunch. Voldemort stumbled back, his one remaining hand raised up in disbelief.

He sent a gust of ice and wind towards Severus, but he blocked his spell easily. Voldemort was still disoriented from his mental fight, dazed with pain and disbelief, and weakened from the blood that was still pulsing from his wound.

He was no match for Severus.

"Look around yourself," Severus said, almost tenderly, and like a child in a nightmare, the Dark Lord followed his command.

His eyes travelled along the bell jar, found his followers outside fighting against Order members and aurors, and only now realized that the tables had turned that he was alone and wandless, closed in with his worst enemies.

For the first time, Severus saw fear on the snakelike face.

"Welcome to the battle, my Lord," He whispered. "It will be your last."

0o0

"Five seconds," Harry shouted, just as Ron bound and gagged his last Death Eater.

He whirled around, his eyes once more flickering towards their anchoring crystal to make sure it was safe. Their plan stood and fell with the magical barrier Minerva had called their safety-bell jar, and while Severus and Draco had placed the activating crystals among the Death Eaters not too long ago, only this one, hidden behind the altar, could be used to deactivate the barrier again. It was Ron's job to keep it safe, to keep them isolated from the rest of the battle long enough to finish with Voldemort.

Ron suppressed another shudder at the thought that he was standing opposite Voldemort for real. He had heard Harry's stories, of course, and seen Hermione's memories, but this was something else entirely.

He could _feel_ Voldemort's power swirl around them, could feel his magic creep into their souls even now, even though the wizard was hurt and confused.

For a moment, Ron felt awe at the thought that his friends, Harry, Hermione, even Snape, had stood up to this wizard time and again, and he lost hope that they could ever defeat him. But so far, their plan had worked perfectly, and Ron still couldn't quite believe that Voldemort had fallen for Hermione's trap that easily.

They had outwitted the darkest wizard of all times, and he, Ron Weasley, had been a part of it. Ron remembered his mother's brothers, his father's mother, the scars on his sister's soul. Three generations of Weasleys had fought against this evil, had fought and died, and _he_ would finally help end it.

"Now, together," Harry bellowed, sounding just like Moody for a moment, and Ron took a deep breath.

His wand seemed to draw the awful pattern into the air all by itself.

"Avada Kedavra," He hissed, focusing all his anger, all his hate at their world's suffering, and saw a thick beam of green light leave his wand and hit the Dark Lord's chest, joined by Harry's, Hermione's, Draco's and Snape's spells.

Voldemort stumbled, a pained gasp on his lips. But he stayed upright.

"Again!" Harry shouted. "Concentrate! _Avada Kedavra!"_

And again the ugly green lights shot from their wands, but this time they seemed to melt together, growing darker and at the same time impossibly bright, and hit Voldemort with the sound of a thousand voices screaming in anger.

In his last moment, the Dark Lord raised his eyes to them, to the united front of his enemies. Ron Weasley, blood traitor. The son of his right hand and his former potions master, their black cloaks billowing in the wind. Hermione, the girl that had betrayed him to his doom. And Harry Potter, the Boy Who Lived, the Chosen One, the boy he had feared like none other.

All standing together, joined in their conviction, and perhaps Voldemort realized in this moment that he had never had a chance, that a power like this could never be defeated by terror, that it could never be brought down with fear.

Perhaps he realized that he had never fully understood what he had been fighting for.

Then he crumbled to the ground, the stump of his wand-hand cradled against his chest, a look of wonder on his face.

The Dark Lord was dead.

Ron felt like fainting.

0o0

Draco felt his heart beat wildly in his chest as he watched the Dark Lord fall to his knees, then tilt slowly backwards, downward, until he lay on the ground, silent and very still.

The moment they had hoped and worked for ever since Hermione had sat by his side at the Great Lake, so many months ago, was finally there.

Voldemort was dead, and for a moment, Draco felt the entirely irrational impulse to lower his wand in respect, to honour this moment that would change everything.

But although the light in his eyes had gone out they were not finished yet, and already precious time was running through their fingers, lost forever.

"Harry," He shouted. "Start the ritual, quickly!

Harry looked up from the cauldron, and over the altar, their eyes met.

Draco could see Harry's fear, his panic that something would go wrong at the last second. Draco didn't envy him. Up to this moment, their plan had been a team effort, but now the responsibility rested on Harry's shoulders alone. Only he could do this. And Harry was afraid he would fail.

But after an endless second, he nodded, his hand clenched around his wand, his lips white with tension.

"Risen from grave and from ashes, risen from blood and from bone," He began to chant, his voice rising and rising until it was a shout over the battle noise. "Your body and soul disconnected, I call thee once more home."

"It's started," Weasley yelled, and Draco whirled around, wand raised, to see a sort of white smoke forming over the corpse of the Dark Lord. It swirled up and down, like ground fog, and Draco had to suppress a shiver.

This was _creepy_. Dark artefacts, slightly mad wizards, unforgivable curses, well he had grown up with that, but even a wizard should stay dead. This amorphous smoke, slowly coalescing into the shape of a human, this soul mist was wrong on an existential level.

Draco felt its horror deep in his bones, and the thought that Harry had faced this when just eleven made his admiration for the Gryffindor rise another notch.

"Now," Hermione shouted, her face, too, filled with horror. "He's nearly ready to rise!"

And Harry, standing all alone at the altar, nodded, raised a silver knife and cut into his arm, very close to the point where Pettigrew's blade had one pierced him. He let the blood drip into the cauldron.

"Blood of your enemy, blood of your blood, magic of faith and of love," He shouted hoarsely, magic swirling up around him like a cloak. "I anchor thee, I anchor thee, I anchor thee with magic and blood!"

The mist began to writhe, trying to move away from Harry and the cauldron, but unseen hands seemed to drag him closer. White darkened to the green of the killing curse, and the mist formed a face, the eyes black holes, the mouth gaping wide, in the silent parody of a scream.

Suddenly, the ground under Draco's feet began to vibrate, and a high, piercing sound permeated the air, growing louder and louder until it filled his head, making it impossible to think. Draco saw Weasley to his left fall to his knees and protect his ears with both hands, saw the battle outside their bell jar cease, all eyes turning towards them.

He saw the green monster darken and grow, fill out until it loomed over them, now more a skull than a face. The very earth seemed to groan in pain. The air tasted of magic and blood.

Still Harry chanted, though his face was ghastly white, still he chanted, repeating the words of the ritual without fail, his wand steady in his hand.

And slowly, inch by inch, Voldemort's spirit was drawn to the cauldron.

He raged against the pull, the ghastly mouth opened in a silent roar, the unnatural form shuddering and convulsing.

But he was powerless against Harry's magic, powerless against the blood that had flowed in his own veins. Three years ago, on the last evening of the Triwizard Tournament, Voldemort had risen with the help of Harry's blood. He had marked him as an equal, as an enemy worthy enough to partake in the ritual.

And equal they were now, Harry's will matching his step for step, his determination to end Voldemort's reign just as strong as Voldemort's desperate fear of dying.

But Harry had his friends, standing at his side, giving him strength. He had the love of those around him, and of those that had died to protect him, and in the lines of his face, in the rigour of his back Draco saw the will to honour that love.

Harry would not fail.

And in the end, even the strength of a near-immortal being, of the most powerful and evil wizard their world had ever seen, could not match that will.

With a wail of utter sorrow, the soul mist lost its form. It was _sucked_ into the cauldron, _sucked_ into the hand that had once belonged to it, and with a last effort, Harry sealed them both back together, the body and the soul, the magic and the will.

Flames burst from the cauldron, white and hot, consuming it too fast to be natural, boiling the potion, melting the silver, eating up the hand until nothing remained, not even ashes.

The Dark Lord was destroyed. Never again would he walk this earth.

0o0

For one moment, Harry closed his eyes. He took a deep, steadying breath, his mind and heart so full that he didn't know what to think.

He wanted to laugh and cry, to hug everyone around him and to sleep for a week.

But then he became aware of the battle that was once again raging outside their bell jar.

Some of the Order members had argued that the Death Eaters would surrender once their Master was dead, but it seemed that Severus and Hermione had been right again – if anything, the Death Eaters were throwing themselves more fiercely into the fight than before, knowing well that there was nothing to protect them this time.

Most were wanted men, and few had the resources left to buy themselves out, not with the eyes of the public on them. Since the wards were still up and holding, their only chance was to defeat them now and flee the country. From merely following their Lord's will, this battle had now turned into a fight for survival, and Harry didn't have to see the strain on some aurors' faces to know that the Death Eaters had yet a chance to win.

Harry couldn't afford to be relieved yet.

He met his friends' eyes in turn, saw Ron's worry, Draco's absolute pride in him, Severus' fierce concentration and the battle fever that was coursing through Hermione.

"Ready?" He asked quietly and received their nods. "Ready."

His hand was steady as he aimed at the crystal and started bringing their protection down.

In a way, this felt like the beginning of a Quiddich match – everything just a bit louder, the colours sharper, the adrenaline filling his body with life.

He flicked his wand to finish the spell and darted left at the same moment, more feeling than seeing the barrier come down. Their little group was scattered in a heartbeat, using rocks and mounds for cover just as they had learned.

He saw Hermione dancing past him, fire roaring from her palms and engulfing her first victim, saw Death Eaters fall to Severus' curses like puppets, and suddenly, he felt a fierce grin bloom on his face.

Yes. Just like Quidditch. Only that he had caught the Snitch already. The rest would be just cleanup.

0o0

Remus wasn't sure how long the battle had raged when the aurors joined them.

One moment, the Order had been barely holding their own, the next moment men and women in battle robes were pouring out of the entrances to the caves, filling their ranks and turning the tide.

Remus attacked and defended, he ducked and charged, all the time aware of the small group inside the bell jar. He saw the pain on Hermione's face, the fierce triumph on Severus', the fear on Harry's.

He saw the Dark Lord destroyed, and for one single, endless moment, he was young again, attending James' and Lily's wedding, his best friend Sirius at his side. The world opened up to him, all those possibilities and chances he had long forgotten, even his curse easy to bear with the prospect of a life with his friends before him.

Perhaps it could be again.

"It is finished," He whispered, saw Sirius' contagious laugh, James' constantly ruffled hair, Lily's warm smile. "You can rest now."

But there was one more thing to do tonight, he thought as he dropped and bound another Death Eater, as the barrier came down with a hiss.

One more thing before he could live on.

"I'll protect your son tonight," He swore softly to the faces in his mind. "I won't disappoint you."

0o0

In the end, war was nothing but a complicated potion. An intricate set of actions and counter-actions, and every wrong step would be poisonous.

But if you possessed the talent, if you had the skill – well, all it took was concentration and precision. Advance, slash and duck – Severus didn't move a muscle as blood splattered across his face.

One step to the side to avoid that _Avada_, another to the front to bring his next enemy into reach.

One sideways flick and a Death Eater attacking Tonks was immobilised. She shouted her thanks, too busy to turn around. He dropped to one knee and shot a low curse under the body shield of another black cloaked man.

Precision. Concentration. War had no time for emotions, no space for theatricals.

And never hesitation. Chop a dragon liver, kill a man. Stir the potion, protect the back of a friend. Slash and curse and hex and slice. Never hesitate, or you'll be dead before you hit the ground.

That one aims for Harry – catch him before he notices you. That one is trying to get into Minerva's back. Cut him off.

His wand was in his right hand, his knife in his left, and he used them both, not caring what got his enemies, as long as they didn't rise again.

His eyes found Hermione, a snarl on her lips, gutting one Death Eater and slicing his partner open with a hex at the same time.

That had never been his way – battle lust and rage, although he was an angry man most of his life. But on the battlefield he was as cold as a surgeon.

No time for satisfaction as he met Yaxley's eyes, just long enough to make him hesitate. Never hesitate.

Never.

He had forgotten Yaxley before his head met the ground.

Duck. Attack. Burn. Rip.

Hermione tore through the ranks of her enemies like a force of nature. Moody dropped into their middle and held them off by sheer force of will. Albus let fire and waves crash them to the ground.

But he preferred to pick them off one by one.

Methodically. Precise. Just preparing a potion, mixing it, stirring, bringing it to the boiling point. Keeping absolute control.

But no one had accused him of mercy yet.

0o0

_I can do this_, Draco thought, jaws clenched so tightly it would hurt like hell in the morning. _I was trained for this. I was born for this!_

Screams and crashes, blood all around him, flashes of spells illuminating the night. The Death Eaters were losing ground, but still they were fighting, and not all bodies littering the earth wore the black robes of their enemies.

Still they were fighting, and just one curse was enough to kill his friends, just one wound could slow you down and make you an easy target.

He stuck as close to Harry as he could, knowing that Hermione was relying on him todo this. She was somewhere in the thick of it, too much an object of hate to guard Harry efficiently, but in his black robes and silver hair he was inconspicuous. Many Death eaters did not even register him as an enemy until it was too late. And he was making good use of that.

Then, suddenly, three of them descended on him, fury in their eyes, their wands raining curses down on him.

_Get cover_, Draco commanded himself, but there was no cover. Only curses.

One caught him in the shoulder, another one grazed his thigh and he went down on his knees, his shields barely holding now.

_I am sorry,_ He thought, _I am so sorry, Harry. I promised you we would all get through this. But it seems that I lied. _

He saw the cold green light of the Killing Curse form of the tip of a wand, knew that it could not miss him. But he refused to look away.

If this was his end, he would meet it with open eyes.

He would die as a Gryffindor.

The curse left the wand and flashed towards him, reached the climax of its curve and descended on him…

…only to impact on a plank of wood that was conjured between him and the curse at the last moment.

Draco looked up into the mirror-faces of Fred and George Weasley, who were even now petrifying and binding his attackers.

"Careful there, young Draco," One of them said. "We can't let…"

"The only blond honorary Weasley…"

"Come to harm, now can…"

"We?"

"Thanks," Draco whispered hoarsely, but they were off already, racing across the battlefield, one shielding the other, explosions illuminating the night where they passed.

"Thank you," He whispered again and turned around to step back into the fight.

Only to meet the cold eyes of Lucius Malfoy.

"Father," He gasped, feeling his presence like a punch in the guts.

"Draco." It was a miracle to Draco how his father, in the middle of all this chaos, with his Master fallen and his future smashed to pieces, could still sound so controlled, so unbelievably arrogant.

"I don't believe I invited you here," Lucius drawled, blocking his way as if it was the most natural thing to meet like this on the battlefield, his robes in tatters and his hair wild, but still holding himself like a king.

"You didn't," Draco answered, not caring that he was drenched in blood and sweat, not caring that his face showed more emotion than his father had ever tolerated. "But I came anyway."

And he whipped his wand up, to aim straight between his father's eyes.

"I see," Lucius answered, and there were a myriad of hidden things in his words. "I see."

For a moment, his face lost the façade of cultured disinterest, betraying how weary his father was, how old. For a moment, Draco remembered his childhood and how his father had been his hero, not capable of doing wrong.

For a moment, he wanted to lower his wand. But then he remembered Hermione, writhing under the _Cruciatus_ and how Lucius had laughed. How Draco had joined in.

"So, my son. Are you going to kill me now, or are you too weak to even finish your betrayal?"

"I am _not _weak," Draco hissed, fury clouding his mind, a deadly curse ready on his lips. "And I have waited for this for a long time."

Still, Lucius seemed more amused than worried.

"Then do it," He whispered. "Murder your own father, Draco. Do it."

He noticed Harry's presence at his side immediately, noticed it without having to look. His friend smelled of blood and flames, but he was steady to his left, and his voice somehow pierced the red haze of anger.

"Don't," He said quietly, and Draco could breathe again.

0o0

Harry saw the Death Eaters close in on Draco and wanted to scream with impotent rage. He was too far away to reach his friend, too far away to do anything, and he couldn't watch this!

But then the twins were there, saving Draco with their trademarked ease and racing off before he could recover. Wherever they passed, Death Eaters changed colour, body parts morphed or explosions lightened the area. Severus had been very right to commend them as members, Harry thought dazedly.

He assured himself that Draco was out of danger, then turned in search for other dangerous spots. But the battle was winding down even as he looked, and some aurors had already started collecting their prisoners.

Only in the vicinity of Hermione and Severus the fight was still on, and it was a fierce, ugly fight, powered no doubt by the hate most Death Eaters must feel for the traitors from their midst.

They had to know by now that defeat would be inevitable, but it seemed that they were determined to take the one responsible for their downfall with them.

Harry would have worried if not for the inhuman efficiency with which both Severus and Hermione were decimating their enemies. Both didn't seem to mind whether they wounded or killed, but where Severus was all cold precision, Hermione was the madness of battle itself.

Severus was obviously trying to stick close to Hermione, more concentrated on that objective than on incapacitating his former colleagues, but Hermione was laughing and killing with equal relish, a madwoman in a playground of death.

For a moment, she reminded Harry of Bellatrix as she stood there, screaming her challenge into the wind, killing and maiming and not caring, and Harry shuddered.

But this wasn't Hermione, he reminded himself, this was the persona she had named the master spy, and just as she had so many weeks ago, when she had killed Theodore Nott, she would snap out of it in the end.

She would be Hermione again, just as Draco had assured him back then.

Without meaning to, Harry sought out Draco again, perhaps to strengthen the memory, perhaps to reassure himself that his friend was still safe. His eyes found him half across the battlefield, still standing where the twins had left him.

And opposite, like a cruel, twisted mirror that showed what could have been, stood his father.

Faster than any thought, Harry was racing across the fields of Tintagel, barely pausing to check that his way was safe, shooting off curses to drop Death Eaters fleeing left and right.

He wasn't sure what he was more frightened of, that Lucius would kill his son or Draco his father, but he knew, deep down, that both of it _mustn't _happen, that Draco wouldn't come out of this battle whole if he did something to his father.

Draco's wand was up and pointing at Lucius when he reached them, and he didn't need to see Draco's face to know that he was close to the breaking point. Just seeing Lucius' face for the first time after Hermione had vanished was enough for Harry to lose control himself, and only worry for his friend stopped his own wand from joining Draco's.

Instead, it seemed once more his duty to calm an infuriated friend.

"Draco," He said quietly. "Don't. This isn't worth it."

Lucius' eyes narrowed in rage and hate, but still that cold smile was on his lips.

"I must say I am rather disappointed, Draco," He drawled. "I would have understood money or power, but to betray me for _that_…"

His eyes slowly travelled across Harry's form. They made him feel dirty, but they also increased his fury. He opened his mouth to retort, but someone beat him to it.

"Not quite right, Lucius," Hermione's voice purred, and Lucius' mask shattered. "Draco didn't betray you _only_ for Harry."

0o0

In the midst of blood and battle, Hermione danced.

Yes! She would fight them until none were left standing, she would send every single one of them to hell, all those bastards that had tortured her and laughed! She would rip their throats out, cut their heads off and feed them to the dogs, she would slice, slash and burn until there was no one left to kill!

Around her, Order members and aurors fought and won, some fiercely, some with worry in their eyes, but all taking care to inflict as little harm as possible before they disarmed and bound their victims.

Not Hermione.

With her real self tucked away safely in her mind, she didn't care if any of the Death Eaters survived the night. What was the fun in fighting if you couldn't deliver the killing blow? Why hunt a prey only to let it survive at the last moment?

Her path crossed that of Minerva for a while and they fought back to back, her former Head of House graceful and lethal like her animagus form. Her black and grey hair had escaped her tight bun and her robes were torn and bloodied, but she was as fierce as Hermione, and nearly as reckless.

They parted with barely a look and less than a smile and Hermione was off again, dancing across the cliffs, leaving dead and dying wherever she went.

The battle was nearly finished but she didn't notice. There were enough enemies surrounding her, and no matter how many fell, there were always more.

She would kill them all!

She threw her head back and roared with laughter, felt life burn through her veins and saw her enemies back away from her.

There was fear in their eyes.

She whipped her wand up and sent a flash of lightning among them. Over the thunder of her spells, she screamed a challenge at them, shouted for them to come and get her, to show the mudblood what they could do.

But they were running away from her.

She cocked her head to the side, disappointed and slightly confused. She would have none of that. How could she kill them if they ran away?

For a moment, she contemplated the best way of rounding them up without the aurors getting in her way.

But then she saw _him_, and lost interest in all else.

Across the field she stormed, not bothering to engage the fleeing Death Eaters in battle. Killing them was stale satisfaction in comparison to what _he_ promised her.

He had hurt her. He had broken her. And now she would rip him to pieces for it.

By the time she reached _him_, Harry was there, standing at Draco's side, vibrating with anger but still holding back. All the better. It meant that there was more of Lucius left for her.

"Not quite right, Lucius," She purred and saw delicious pain contorting his face. She would enjoy this. "Draco didn't betray you _only_ for Harry."

She stepped forward, blocking Draco's firing line and invading Lucius' personal space as if they were meeting on a dancefloor.

"There was also me, you know?"

0o0

Severus had just ducked a bludgeoning curse and answered with a _Sectumsempra_ when he saw a sudden change go through Hermione.

Like a cat losing interest in her prey in favour of a larger one, she turned away and raced across the field, hair and robes billowing behind her. Tracing the aim of her intense concentration, his eyes fell on two heads of silver hair, facing each other in silent hate.

He sent his _Patronus_ off with a message for Albus and then he was after her. He was cataloguing the wounded and the dead as he sped past them, noticing with relief that their losses had been very small, but most of his attention was fixed on the form of Hermione, running ahead of him.

He felt worry gnaw at his insides, not because of what she would do – she had a right to that, as far as he was concerned -, but because she was so bloody reckless when the battle fever took her.

This fight was virtually over, and while the aurors wouldn't dare question them for a few Unforgivables employed in a tight spot, torturing a prisoner after the battle had ended would _not _go over so well.

But he had planned for this, thank Merlin for his paranoia. He would keep her safe and let her do what must be done. They would bury her demons here, tonight, to let her live in peace for the rest of her life.

He reached them in time to hear her words and see their effect on Lucius.

His stomach twisted in disgust, and he could hear a low growl on the wind. It took him a moment to realize that it came from his own throat, and even longer to notice that his wand was aiming at Lucius. Rather lower than his face.

"No," Hermione hissed, not once moving her burning eyes away from Lucius. "He's mine. You will not take this from me."

"Hermione…" Harry began, obviously planning to calm her down, but Severus shook his head in warning.

"No," She hissed again. And then: "Did you miss me, Lucius?"

"Hermione," Lucius whispered, his voice broken and painful to hear. "I thought…"

"You thought I loved you?" She laughed, harsh and cold. "Well, you thought wrong. All that time, Lucius, all the secrets you were whispering into my ears, and I only ever used you. In the end, it was you who really betrayed the Dark Lord. Does it hurt to know that?"

He met her eyes, no understanding in his face, no dignity, no pride.

"I see it does," She whispered. "Good. _Crucio!"_

His painful cries echoed from the cliff and drowned in the rolling waves of the Northern Sea.

Hermione didn't notice when Draco, Harry and Severus formed a tight group around her, protecting her back.

She didn't see the members of the Order, who, bruised and dirtied from the not long finished battle, moved in to shield her from view. No auror from the Ministry's side would see this. No one but her friends would know.

"You should have let us see what was going on!" They later protested, but the Order swore that they had seen nothing at all.

"She found Malfoy lying dead in the field. It must have happened during the battle", Dumbledore would retort mildly. They would all agree to that, and something in their eyes would make the aurors think again about questioning them further.

But now, they turned their backs to the Ministry people, and their eyes away from what their master spy was doing. Only Severus watched her, his eyes burning with dust and weariness.

And Hermione watched Lucius, her eyes drinking in his pain. She seemed to grow, something that had been broken straightened again, something she had lost returning to her.

"You are a miserable creature, Lucius Malfoy," She hissed, suddenly ending the stream of curses and hexes that had kept his body twitching, "But your power over me is at an end. Do you know what will happen, Lucius? My dearest?"

She grinned, baring her teeth like an attacking animal. She was a frightful sight, and Severus heard a whimper escape the lips of her Death Eater prisoner.

She heard it, too, and chuckled, a low, growling sound that raised Severus' hackles.

"This will happen," she continued, walking closer to Malfoy so that she could meet his eyes, huge in the deadly white face. There was blood staining his silver hair. "I will kill you now, Lucius, enjoying it greatly. And then…" Her wand was drawing little circles on his chest. He was trying to crawl away from her, panting in fear, but on of her boots stopped him in his tracks. "Then I will go home. And forget you."

She moved away from him and lifted her hand. A ball of fire was forming in her palm, growing bigger and bigger, until it had the size of one of Hagrid´s giant pumpkins.

"Sleep well, Lucius," She whispered. "And just so you now: You were a miserable lover."

She threw the ball of fire. A scream, long and drawn out, echoed across the cliffs. Then silence.

Quietly she stood for a moment, swaying slightly in the cold North wind. Until now, Severus hadn't noticed how cold the night was, how clear the skies and how brilliant the rising sun.

Dawn was coming, and for the first time in too many years, it would be a day without fear.

Suddenly, his heart ached with all the possibilities in front of them. He felt dizzy with relief.

"It is over," She said, and Severus could see her change before his eyes. The fierceness was fading, giving way to the woman she had become. The master spy was crawling back into her tower. He hoped she would remain there forever.

He met Harry's and Draco's eyes across the battlefield, taking in all they had been through and all they had done. He took stock of their allies and friends, relieved to see so many familiar eyes looking back at him.

Some were missing, but there would be another day to mourn them.

For now, there was only this: relief, and freedom, and Hermione.

He drew her into his arms and she clung to him, their black clothed bodies melting together in the other's view.

They walked away, towards the cliffs that rose high against the early morning sun. No one made a move to stop them.

The battle had ended, and they had survived, the master spy and the spymaster. They would go home.

And they would fall asleep together and wake together. And there would be birds singing in the courtyard.

And there would be peace.

0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0

**A/N**:

It feels strange to finish this, especially after so many years. But finished it is (except for the epilogue), and I want to take this last chance to thank all of you, for your caring, your patience, your support.

There were some difficult phases writing this, not least because real life made several ugly appearances, but you have no idea how much it helped to know that you were here with me, reading this, loving it as much as I do.

And so here's my final thanks, for all of the reviews, comments and thoughts, and also my final request:

If you've reached this end, if you journeyed so far with me, please, let me know. Drop me a line, a review, whatever. Just tell me. I'd greatly appreciate it to know that you've been along for the ride, and that it meant something to you.

Wishing you all the best,

Kayly Silverstorm.


	79. Epilogue I

**A/N**: Here you go, then! It's been a while, but today I give you the first part of a wonderfully long epilogue (part two will be posted in about a week), which you'll hopefully like and review aplenty. This officially closes the main story of "When a Lioness Fights", but remember that there will be (irregular) updates to the collection of short stories called "What doesn't kill you makes you Granger", and that I'm still taking ideas and wishes on one shots and missing scenes.

Enjoy!

0o0

**And, fyi, to make the orientation easier: **Spouses and Children:

Ron and Melanie Weasley: Rose 17, Albus 15, Fabian 12, Hermione 12

Neville and Luna Lovegood: Anastasia 13, Peppermint 11, Augustus 8

Remus and Nymphadora 'Tonks' Lupin: **Lily 17,** Sirius 15, **Ted 12**

Ginny and Dean Weasley: Eugene 13

**0o0**

**0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o**

**0o0**

**Epilogue: Nineteen Years Later**

_**(well, twenty to be honest, but let's stick with nineteen for tradition's sake)**_

Autumn was lingering that year. The morning of Halloween was crisp and golden as an apple, and the water of the Great Lake glistened in the sunlight like a sheet of bronze, spreading out to the horizon.

With a sigh, Minerva McGonagall leaned against the entrance doors of Hogwarts, exhausted before the day had even really begun. As she stood silently, bathing her face in the last warm rays of sunlight, she could feel every single of her years in the heaviness of her bones.

She had been Headmistress for fifteen years now, and a member of the Wizengamot ever since Albus had passed away eight years ago.

She sighed again, and pulled her Tartan cloak tighter around her shoulders. Perhaps it was time to think about a replacement.

But not today. Today, they would celebrate the anniversary of their victory at Tintagel, and though she would never have admitted it to anybody, Minerva was excited at the thought of all her old colleagues and friends assembled at the school.

They had remained a close knit group over the years – especially the former Inner Circle of the Order -, but they seldom found the time to meet as a whole, what with many of them busy in so many ways. But tonight they would come, all of them, to honour the dead and remind the new generation of what had once been.

Minerva had done her utmost to keep the political humdrum and press coverage to a minimum, and she hoped that the attendance of Hogwarts students – if only the fifth to seventh years with a few exceptions – would add to the celebrations.

She also hoped Fred and George Weasley would refrain from spiking the punch, this time. She could well do without the view of a dancing Madeye Moody, thank you very much.

"Professor McGonagall?" The voice of her Defence against the Dark Arts Teacher and assistant Headmaster sounded all too timid to her liking. She had snapped at William Gopman once, in the beginning, intending for him to snap back and clear the air, but he had only become more nervous and obliging after that, and so she had resigned herself to being treated like a legend for the rest of her working days.

"I'm here, William," She called out, wondering when it was the last time that she had really been challenged by a teacher or student. Too long ago, that was certain. But students these days simply hadn't the spunk anymore, and when Albus had passed away…

Merlin, she missed the old coot.

"Professor McGonagall, the aurors have arrived," William sounded slightly out of breath, as if he had rushed through the castle in search of her. Which he probably had. He seemed to believe that catastrophes would occur if things took a bit longer than planned, and even the thought of missing a deadline made him cringe.

But then he had never experienced _real_ catastrophes, Minerva thought with a bit of the arrogance old age allowed her. If only she could have convinced Remus to stay and take the job.

She sighed again. "I assume they want the castle searched and the protective wards on the Great Hall repaired?" She asked, not bothering to turn away from the beautiful view yet.

She couldn't imagine leaving this place. Hogwarts had been her home for more years than she cared to count. Everything of real value had happened to her here.

"Yes, Headmistress," William agreed eagerly. "They have also asked when the other guests of honour will arrive…"

He let the sentence trail off, careful not to show the excitement. The thought of sharing a table with his heroes had been making him restless for the past week, until Minerva had told him in uncertain terms that Harry Potter had been nothing but a scrawny little boy when she had first met him, and that Draco Malfoy had been a worse troublemaker than most Gryffindors. That had shut him up, but he was still giddy with excitement inside.

"Most of them are scheduled for dinner, but those who have children at the school will arrive earlier to spend time with them. As for Hermione and Severus, I never know what they will do until they do it."

In fact the two of them had been absent for several anniversaries now, preferring to celebrate privately or busy with things they chose not to share with Minerva. But their last letter had sounded promising, and Minerva was hopeful that the twenty-year anniversary would draw out even those two.

Her favourite student and her favourite colleague. Minerva really looked forward to meeting the two again. She let her eyes linger on the calm lake one last time before waving William back inside and following him swiftly. Time to let go of the past and settle into the role of Headmistress again.

She would see them all tonight, after all.

0

0o0

0

Remus smiled when the silhouette of Hogwarts appeared before them, and when he passed the wards only to collide with three insistent attackers of differing size, his smile only widened.

He let go of Dora's hand and pulled his children into a bear hug, unwilling to let go even when their initial enthusiasm gave way to embarrassed whining.

"Dad, you're impossible!" His oldest son complained, and Remus could hear Dora chuckle as she too joined the group hug.

"I don't care, Sirius James Lupin," He declared pompously. "And it would do you good to respect your parents. After all, we are decorated war heroes and role models for all of you!"

"Role models my ass," Sirius murmured and received a stern look from his father and an even deeper chuckle from his mother as answer.

"You just don't know how lucky you are," Remus declared dramatically but allowed Dora to remove their children from his arms, only to subject them to a long hug of her own.

Lily, Sirius and Ted resigned themselves to Dora's hug slightly more graciously, but they were still eager to see it done and head back to the Great Hall with their parents.

"You have no idea how the teachers have been hounding us about tonight," Sirius complained, aiming for condescendingly irritated and not quite managing it. He was just fifteen, and no matter how grown up he wanted to be, the excitement still shone through.

"Well, it's only reasonable, isn't it?" Lily answered back, managing the tone much better. "It's the twentieth anniversary, and they don't want the students to misbehave in front of all those celebrities."

Ted, 12 years old and not yet bothering to sound mature, snorted. "Celebrities," he echoed. "It's just Uncle Neville, and Uncle Harry, and Draco."

Remus was glad his children saw it that way. They had been in contact with the so-called war heroes all their life, and had shared meals, holidays and celebrations with them long before they learned how famous their 'uncles' were. Harry had to deal with enough starstruck fans without adding his friends' children to the list.

"But there will be the press, too," Lily argued. "And Headmistress McGonagall certainly won't want reports of bad behaviour in the Daily Prophet."

"Well, no, we couldn't have that," Dora murmured, sharing a look with Remus and grinning as they remembered all those glaring reports about Harry Potter's misdemeanours and heroics the Prophet had dished out over the years. There had never been quite another student like that, and Remus was quite sure that Minerva was glad about it.

It was strange, Remus thought. All those years gone by, and yet here they were with memories still so close to the surface, just waiting to be recalled.

But perhaps it was this day of all days that reminded them of the past and everything that had changed. Perhaps it was only right to let the memories out to play once a year. No wonder Hermione and Severus seldom chose to attend these celebrations.

"So who's here already?" He asked to divert his mind from that old path. "Have Draco and Harry had their entrance yet?"

Sirius shrugged and Lily grinned. She had always been closest to her godfather, the almighty Harry Potter, and the ruckus wherever he appeared amused her to no end. Especially when Draco was around, always ready to claim the attention for himself.

"Not yet," she answered. "But half the students are going wild already. It's ridiculous, isn't it?"

"Yes, ridiculous," Remus murmured, then slung an arm around his oldest and entered the Great Hall together with her.

For this special day, the backmost part of the Hall where the staff table was usually located had been enlarged, making space for several tables of varying size. Each one was neatly labelled, and Remus grinned, recognizing the hand of Minerva in every part of the meticulous preparations.

The largest table to the very left would hold the press, and Minerva had taken care to place both teachers and other guests as a buffer between them and the honorary guests of the night. There was extra space reserved for the guests' children, Remus noted with approval, but for now he would make sure to sit together with his children and enjoy their company.

"How does it feel? Your last year at Hogwarts?" he asked his oldest daughter with something dangerously like nostalgia.

Lily shrugged. "It's a lot of work, preparing for the NEWTs," she said. "But otherwise rather boring. No time for parties, and everyone is busy planning their future.

Remus smiled, opening his mouth to tell her that it didn't sound that bad, but someone else beat him to it.

"Well, that doesn't sound like our seventh year at all," Ron Weasley remarked, stepping up to them and drawing Remus into a short, manly hug. "I can remember much more end-of-the-world-stuff going on, can't you?"

Someone behind Ron groaned, but it was a good-natured groan. Remus half turned around to see Ron's wife Melanie standing a few feet away with their four children.

"Honestly Ron," she complained. "I know that y'all will reminiscence for the whole evening, but can't you keep it at bay a moment longer? We've barely arrived."

"Sure, honey," Ron grinned that broad, easy smile of his that he had grown into over the years. "I'll go back to embarrassing the children, then."

This time, the groan was perceivably louder and originating from said children.

Remus moved on to greet the other early arrivals, waving at Kingsley and Moody, nodding towards Hestia Jones, Bill and Fleur Weasley and their children and even garnering a short embrace from Minerva as she rushed past.

He settled down with his wife and children, glad to share time with them on _their_ home turf for once, and time passed quickly as they talked. Students trickled in and out for dinner, mostly the younger years that would not partake in the evening's feast.

And before they had realized it, seven o'clock had arrived, the doors to the Great Hall were opened wide, and the guests began to pour in.

Ted (or Teddy, as his siblings and parents usually called him despite his furious protests) couldn't help but gloat a bit. His friends would be dying of envy right about now. As second years, their Head of House had banished them to their Common Room, with no chance of even a glimpse of their guests.

Granted, Ted wasn't very excited to meet Uncle Neville and Aunt Luna, or any other member of the Order – he saw them often enough outside of school. It was always cool to meet Harry and Draco (who both refused being called 'Uncle'), but an evening of boring speeches made more than up for it.

But this, sitting at one table with his parents and siblings, with Headmistress McGonagall, Aunt Ginny and Uncle Ron, the grey-haired Moody and a bunch of other Order members he'd known since he was a kid, this was kinda nice.

"Do you think Hermione and the Professor will come?" A voice to his left whispered. Ted turned away from the entrance door he had been watching – the food wouldn't appear until all the guests had arrived, and he was bloody hungry – and shrugged.

"Dad didn't say," he told Hermione, who had leaned around her twin brother Fabian to ask. Hermione had a slight obsession with her namesake and the forbidding Severus Snape, whom all of the Weasly family called only 'the Professor' (his dad had once said that it was because Uncle Ron was still 'bloody terrified' by him, and Ted understood Uncle Ron perfectly).

The name had somehow stuck with the children, and the Professor didn't seem to mind.

"I hope they'll come," Hermione whispered. "They always tell such interesting stories!"

"They're boring," her twin Fabian disagreed. "All they ever do is read books and stuff. And the Professor always makes me wash my hands before I can go to the library."

"I don't think they're boring," Hermione said waspishly. "I think they're _mysterious."_

Dad, who was sitting to Ted's right, chuckled. "I told you not to give her _Wuthering Heights_ for Christmas, Dora," he told their mother. "It only glorifies Severus and he's melodramatic enough as it is."

Lily snickered, and Ted huffed angrily. His parents were always using long words when they didn't want the younger ones to understand. He _would_ go and buy himself a dictionary the very next Hogsmeade weekend.

"I think it's a fitting book," Hermione's mom said now. "What with their secluded little cottage and him so dashing and always in black…"

Uncle Ron groaned and pretended to bang his head against the table. Ted snickered. He _liked _his Uncle Ron, who never used too long words and always seemed to understand how Ted felt.

"Don't encourage…" Uncle Ron started, but then the doors to the Great Hall opened and all of Ted's attention was centred there.

The first ones to enter were his Uncle Neville and Aunt Luna, together with their children Anastasia, Peppermint and Augustus, who had, as his Dad once said, 'inherited the best of both worlds'. Mum had jabbed him in the ribs for that one, but as usual, only Lily had understood them.

Ted liked Aunt Luna and the rest a lot, but it was an absolute bore meeting them outside their own house, because of the aurors always swarming around them.

Peppermint, who was nearly as old as Ted, had once told him that she didn't really mind it, since the aurors were always nice to them and showing her tricks and spells, but Ted was glad that his father wasn't the Minister of Magic, he really was.

There was a great fuss around Uncle Neville as usual, and he seemed relieved to sit down with them after he had finally answered the journalists questions and shaken a lot of hands.

It was always funny, seeing him all Minister-like, serious and grown up being the centre of attention, when Ted knew that Neville really liked sitting in the background and listening to others more than anything else.

"Serves you right, mate," Uncle Ron said after embracing Uncle Neville and clapping him on the back. "You _could _have been a herbologist, you know."

Neville sighed, as he always did when somebody said that, as if he really, really wanted to be a herbologist.

Ted had once asked why Uncle Neville didn't stop being a Minister if he didn't like it, but Dad and Mum had explained that politics were important and Neville was just brilliant at it, and that sometimes you had to do the things that needed to be done, even if you wanted something else.

Ted was glad that _he_ didn't have to be Minister. Sometimes, being a grown-up really sucked.

"No he couldn't," Aunt Luna disagreed now in her usual dreamy voice. "The Grobleys would have overrun Britain if it hadn't been for Neville."

Ted wanted to ask what a _Grobley_ was – not that he supposed they really existed, but Aunt Luna's explanations were always huge fun -, but then the door opened again and in walked Ted's mate Eugene with his parents, Aunt Ginny and Uncle Dean.

Ted waved and pointed to the empty place to his right, but before Eugene had even reached the table, other guests began streaming in. Ted nodded and waved and got hugged more than he cared for – but Molly Weasley simply hugged _everyone_, no matter their age, and so did Aunt Hestia, Uncle Bill and Aunt Fleur.

Whispering and then cheering rose from the student tables and Ted grinned, knowing that Harry and Draco had probably arrived. He turned back to the entrance door and there they were, Harry dressed in his auror robes and a bit embarrassed by all the attention, Draco in fancy silver-grey dress robes (Dad called him _flamboyant_, another one of those words) and enjoying himself as always.

"Twenty years, and he's still loving every minute of it," Dad sighed.

"And _Harry_ is, too," Mum pointed out, just as Harry elbowed Draco in the ribs to stop him from handing out autographs. They couldn't hear them talk from up here, but Ted had known his two favourite uncles for long enough to know that Harry would be quietly swearing by now, while Draco would be insulting Harry's manners and parents and muggle upbringing. They did it all the time, but it never got boring.

"And what have we here?" Draco exclaimed as they finally reached the table.

He drew himself up self-importantly, in the way that always made Ted and the other children laugh and the grown-ups roll their eyes, and Harry reached out and smacked him lightly on the back of his head.

"Ouch!" Draco said, scandalized, and smacked back.

"Ouch!" Harry sounded honestly surprised, even though they had done that as long as Ted could remember. "Behave, or I'll sic the twins on you!"

"The twins love me more than you!" Draco declared, and as if they had heard, the infamous founders of WWW entered the hall. If possible, the cheer for them was even louder than for Draco and Harry, and they _did _give away autographs. Probably with something explosive attached, if Ted knew them at all.

"I am their investor," Harry argued. "So they have to do what _I_ say."

It had taken Ted quite some time to realize that the hero from his history books, the legendary Chosen One, star auror and political leader for reforms, and his slightly goofy Uncle Harry whom Draco made fun of all the time, were one and the same person.

But the older he got, the more he realized that all the people now sitting around their table, joking and sharing anecdotes, were either famous, rich, or brilliant. Or all three. But that didn't stop them from having fun, and Ted settled back in his chair with the expectation of a wicked evening.

And then a strange thing happened. Their table, the table that held all the former Order members and war heroes, suddenly grew very quiet, although the Hall around them was still full of whispering and talking. Slowly, one by one, the grown-ups around Ted stood, their hands clasped to their sides like Ted had learned in etiquette lesson.

They were holding themselves very still and erect, as if expecting a member of the Wizengamot or the Minister himself (which was stupid, since Uncle Neville was standing right in the middle of them, looking just as formal as the rest).

Ted turned towards the entrance doors and saw that Aunt Hermione and Uncle Severus had arrived. They were not wearing any of the fancy clothes the rest of them had chosen (or been forced into), just simple black pants, boots and robes, and they looked almost dull in the glittering, cheery atmosphere of the Great Hall.

Nothing remarkable, nothing worth noticing, and so the journalists and most of the guests didn't notice them.

But the Order members did. And they stood to attention.

It was always like this on official meetings. They all respected each other, Uncle Neville got compliments on his newest political move, Draco on the new potion he had designed and Harry on whatever bad guy he had caught that week, but when the Professor and Aunt Hermione arrived, everything else seemed to stop.

Ted had once asked his dad for an explanation.

"We are honouring their sacrifices, and all they did to end this war," Dad had said, but that didn't make sense to Ted. After all, Harry had ended the war by killing Voldemort, hadn't he?

Sure, the others had helped, but why those two especially?

Dad had just smiled and told him that keeping secrets was part of being free, and Ted had asked whether that meant he didn't have to tell him about his marks on the next Potions test, and Dad had laughed. But Ted still didn't know why the Professor and Aunt Hermione were treated with such _reverence_ (that was a long word he had actually looked up, and it fitted just right).

Then Aunt Hermione and the Professor reached the table, and just as they did every time the two attended an official anniversary celebration, all the grown-ups at the table bowed to them.

The Professor frowned and Aunt Hermione blushed, but nothing was said and once they were sitting among the others and had chosen their drinks, everything was normal again, as if nothing had ever happened.

Ted would never understand grown-ups, he never would.

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Harry thought his grin would be splitting his head any minute now, it was so wide. Draco at his side looked cool and unimpressed as usually, but there was a warmth in his eyes that Harry could, with his many years of experience, easily identify as nostalgia.

They were grown men, nearly forty both of them, with settled lives and good careers, and the simple fact that they were revisiting their old school made them as giddy as children.

But it was the first time they would be here, all of them, together, celebrating the anniversary of the beginning of their lives as free wizards and witches. And to think that he had mainly associated Halloween with the death of his parents once.

And Merlin, how his parents and Sirius would have loved to be here tonight, he thought with a tinge of longing. No pain or actual need anymore – he had his own family now, and he wouldn't change his life for the world, but sometimes he just wondered…

He caught Draco's eyes and saw his own feelings mirrored in them. After all, they had both lost their fathers on a Halloween night, if under very different circumstances.

Under the table, their hands found each other and touched, just for a reassuring moment, then Draco settled into the role of arrogant brat he so enjoyed, and Harry leaned back to watch.

They had changed so much, Moody with his snow-white hair and his gnarled hands, Ginny ripened into a real beauty, Neville with the quiet seriousness of a man doing important work.

But then again, he thought as he watched Ron joking with Dean, Minerva looking her usual stern self and Molly berating her grand children, perhaps they hadn't changed so very much after all.

But they _had_ grown up, all of them, and for the past twenty years they had inhabited, protected, and changed this world they had been so in awe of, so many years ago. They had all found their places, surprising and unexpected as they had been.

Who'd have thought, twenty years ago, that Neville would be Minister for Magic one day and Luna Head of the Department of Mysteries (and his wife!)? That Draco would be one of the most eminent Potions Masters this country had, and he Head of the aurors? That Ron would marry an American and captain the Chudley Cannons together with his only sister?

And, perhaps the most shocking thing of all for their yearmates: Who'd have ever expected Hermione Granger to found a freelance spell developing firm together with their dreaded Potions Master?

They were quite successful and sought after by various governments, but the nature of their partnership was a continuing riddle to larger parts of the wizarding society, and from the way they now sat at each other's side, close but not touching, talking to friends on either side of them, the public would have to keep on guessing.

Suddenly, Hermione smiled without an outward reason to do so, and Harry reached out with his foot and bumped against her leg.

"No silent talking at the table," he said sternly, echoing a rule Molly Weasley had instigated a few years ago, and Hermione's smile widened.

"So you still haven't gotten to that stage?" she asked dryly, and Harry groaned.

"Don't bring that up, please," he mock-whispered, but Draco had already heard and was even now launching into a rant about Harry's total lack of talents in the Occlumency-department.

"I reckon it's quite enough that I can protect my own mind," Harry defended himself.

"Oh, but you don't know what you're missing," Draco purred, and now it was Hermione who bumped him.

"We'll have none of that at the table either, thank you," she said primly, but didn't bother to hide her smile.

"Say, Hermione," Draco said with a sly look in his eyes. "You don't happen to know anything about that strange business in South America last week?"

"South America?" Hermione's eyes were innocently wide in her tanned face (unusually tanned for Great Britain and October). "What business in South America?"

"The one with the wizarding warlord who took fifty hostages to pressure Brazil into releasing his partner in crime and was mysteriously defeated by a pair of operatives from an unknown institution?" Severus said smoothly. "No. Why should we have heard about that?"

"You'd better ask Luna, anyway," Hermione advised him, her eyes still unnaturally innocent. "She's the expert for mysteries around here."

"Right," Harry said, grinning. "Good job, though."

"Yes," Severus mused quietly. "Those operatives are geniuses, whoever they are. I admit that even I was impressed."

Hermione elbowed him and got a smirk in answer, but before Harry could add a question about the mysteriously retrieved magical artefact in Glasgow three weeks ago, Minerva had walked over to the lectern and was introducing Neville's speech.

Neville swallowed, adjusted his robes, and stood with a sigh that was something of a tradition by now. As unbelievable as it had seemed in the beginning, Neville was excellent at this sort of thing, and Harry suspected him to secretly like giving speeches, too. He was far too good a politician to do it half-heartedly, but he was also too good to show that he liked it.

The lectern was positioned at the edge of the platform that hosted their tables, so that both students and the audience could see and hear the speakers clearly. Neville made his way to the corner with sure, steady steps and waited for the clapping and cheering to calm down.

He was an unusually popular Minister.

When everything had quieted, he half turned his head and looked towards his friends, then returned his attention to the rest of the hall.

"Tonight," He began. "I am not here as your Minister, nor as a politician or decorated war hero. Tonight, I'm with you as one of a family, one of a group that refused to let others fight for them."

His eyes darted towards Harry, who recognized the words and smiled. Neville smiled back.

"It was anything but heroic back then. It was overwhelming and terrifying, and we all had to do things we weren't ready for, some of us more than others. Some of us stumbled into it all, or got drawn in by association or sheer stubbornness."

Ginny laughed softly, probably remembering how she had waltzed into the Forbidden Forest all those years ago, with no idea what was at stake.

"Some of us made choices that were hard, unbelievably hard for our age, and some showed a courage that to this very day takes my breath away."

Harry noticed more than a few eyes resting on Hermione at those words, but she gave no sign of recognition and reaction, and so the attention returned to Neville.

"I still remember what it felt like, training for that battle and hiding it from everyone around us. I was still a boy then, barely older than many of you here, and I was training together with men and women that have become legends since or were even then…"

As Neville recounted the events of those weeks and months, Harry let his own memories rise to the surface. It was a tradition of theirs: Every year on this anniversary, another member of the Order would give this speech, recounting their memories, their thoughts and fears.

Nineteen years ago, when the first anniversary celebration rolled around with pomp and circumstance, they had decided that they wouldn't allow this battle to become a part of history as long as one of them lived.

They would not have it embellished or sugarcoated. They would not allow for it to be used by political powers or ideologies. They would stick to the truth, _their_ truth, not what the public eye had made of it.

And every year, in every new story, they would reflect what they had been and would become, what they cherished most in their lives.

With Neville, it was the realization that he _did_ matter, that he could be a part of something and change the world despite his clumsiness or his average grades. For Ginny, it was the knowledge that every hero was a man or woman, first and foremost, that everyone was afraid, and everyone could conquer their fear. For Draco, it was the fact that no one decided your fate but you, yourself, and that this decision had to be made.

For Moody, it was the necessity to retain constant vigilance.

And for Harry, it was the knowledge that friends and family could be found in the unlikeliest of places, that no matter your upbringing or your position in life, you might find someone that was loyal, true, and that you could love.

Only Hermione had never given the speech – there were too many things she couldn't have said, or wouldn't have, and forcing her to omit them would have turned the whole thing into a lie, the very thing they wanted to avoid.

But Harry had told his story, more than once, and so had Draco and Severus. It was always a shock, to hear about that day from the perspective of another friend, to remember that he hadn't been alone in his fears and his hopes, and yet to find that, in their eyes, that day had been something else entirely.

Neville told them about the last minutes of Tom Riddle, that lost child now known as Lord Voldemort, and as always, the audience was utterly silent.

But Harry remembered the stench and noise of battle, the flashing lights and primal screams, he remembered Hermione's face, twisted in hate, Draco's hand in his and Lucius Malfoy burning to his death.

These things would never be told, but they would never be forgotten, either, not as long as any of them lived.

"It was a night of fire and death," Neville continued quietly. "And none of us who fought that battle will ever tell you that it was noble, or great, or fighting the good fight. But it was the only way out we could see, the only chance to end the night that had fallen on our world for so many years. Some of us couldn't believe that it had ended, even when they saw Voldemort's body, even when the Death Eaters were arrested.

"Even when the battle was finished, we couldn't believe that it was finally over."

He paused, his eyes sweeping slowly across the Great Hall, across the students and guests, looking up at him with awe and fear in their eyes, some remembering, some imagining.

"But to quote an old friend," He then said, and this time he turned towards Hermione and inclined his head in a gesture of respect. „'Today we are here. No matter what we feared in our darkest hours, we made it. And today everything we have done will be honoured and recognized.' Today we remember the past, and make sure to guard and protect our future. I wish you all a very happy Halloween."

The silence continued, but then the guests clapped and the children cheered and platters with appetisers appeared on the tables. Neville opened his mouth to wish them all a pleasant meal when suddenly, every single candle in the Hall was extinguished.

Leaving them all in darkness.

Panic settled in among the visitors and children, but the Order's table had erupted into concentrated action, and Harry's years of training snapped into place.

"Lights?" He demanded.

"Working on it," Remus, Bill and Dora all called out. Draco had already conjured small blue witchlights to hover over the tables, giving them enough light to see, and Harry himself started on a series of scanning spells that should tell them what exactly was wrong.

Hermione, however, was still sitting at the table, very still, head cocked to the side, as if she was listening to something. Severus had vanished from her side.

"I'm going to calm the children," Minerva announced, her Scottish accent more prominent as always when she was under stress. Her DADA teacher and assistant Headmaster stumbled from his place to accompany her as she stepped from the platform, her wand glowing in the darkness.

The candles flickered back to life, but the festive atmosphere had changed into something far more eerie, and their light seemed less bright somehow, casting shadows across the walls and windows.

"I would ask you all to remain in your seats," Minerva now called out sternly, and the shouting students calmed down immediately. She was certainly ruling this school with an iron hand, Harry thought in admiration. "This was nothing but a short interruption, entirely harmless. We will continue with the feast immediately, and I…"

"I don't think you will, McGonagall", the voice echoing across the hall was cold, magically distorted, and, beyond all, disembodied.

Harry shared a dark glance with Draco. This did not sound good.

"I think you will instead find that all is not well, that your wards have fallen and the castle is surrounded. All floo connections and portkeys are disabled, and unless you meet our demands, the only feast Hogwarts will see tonight is one of blood and death."

"Great," Hermione whispered and rolled her eyes. "A melodramatic one. Why can't the villains for once be pragmatic and down to earth?"

But she, too, was listening gravely to what the voice had to say, and she, too, looked worried. Harry knew that there were enough fighters at this table to defeat a small army, but there were also a lot of children in the Hall, and a battlefield was no place for children.

Minerva had, unsurprisingly, come to the same conclusion, and although her voice was firm, there was also worry in her face, and her hands were trembling slightly.

"Who are you?" she called into the silence of the Hall. "And what are your demands?"

"We are a group that has united to right the wrongs committed in the past," the voice answered, and Hermione rolled her eyes again.

"And what we want? Harry Potter, of course, unarmed and alone."

And Harry groaned, all that pleasant nostalgia replaced by the old, irritating feeling of having someone after him.

"Why can't I ever have a normal Halloween?" he complained.

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Lily Lupin wouldn't ever admit it, but she felt quite shaken up. Hogwarts was _safe_, it had always been the safest place on earth, and things like this didn't happen in real life, they only took place in stories or in history books. Suddenly, all those anecdotes about battles and danger weren't that awesome anymore.

She locked eyes with her brothers and saw the fear on their faces, too, saw the fear in all the children that were sharing this end of the table. But in contrast to the students down at the house tables, none of them made a sound.

They had all been trained by their somewhat paranoid parents (Moody's influence, no doubt), and while they would shout and make a fuss under ordinary circumstances, problems like this meant that they had to stay absolutely still and let their parents handle things. Every one of them knew that.

But still they were terrified.

Their parents, aunts and uncles had gathered around the other end of the table, already deep in plans and conversations.

"Status of the wards?" Harry, who had seemingly taken control, now called.

Professor McGonagall closed her eyes, probably accessing the tight knot of Hogwarts wards in her mind that Lily had learned about in History of Magic. When she opened them again, she was pale.

"The wards have fallen," She confirmed what the voice had. "All of them. There's only one left protecting this hall from invasion, a foreign one…"

Strangely enough, most eyes zeroed in on Aunt Hermione, who raised an eyebrow and dryly said: "I took the liberties to add a bit to security, Minerva. It's a rather crude protection, tied only to the invited guests, but it will keep them out for at least an hour… or longer, depending on the abilities of their ward breaker."

Uncle Bill – after all a professional curse breaker – closed his eyes and nodded in agreement a moment later, but everyone seemed willing to take Hermione's word for it.

"William, check the floo network," Professor McGonagall ordered and Professor Gopman, DADA-teacher and a bit of a wuss, nodded and hastened over to the next fireplace.

"Shut down," he called.

"And the castle is, indeed, surrounded," Aunt Hermione added, not explaining how she knew, but again everyone seemed to simply take her word.

Harry sighed, and ran his hand through his hair in what had become a public trademark gesture. Boys who wanted to be like their idol imitated it, but in this moment, it didn't look heroic at all. More frustrated.

"What do we do, then?" he asked, and, to Lily's growing irritation, he too looked towards Aunt Hermione, as if he expected an answer from her.

"We should remove all children and those who won't fight from the Hall," she answered immediately. "The room below the Great Hall should be large enough to hold all of them, right, Minerva?"

Headmistress McGonagall, still standing amidst the students, nodded.

"Bill, Luna and you, Minerva, should go down there with them. Together you three should be able to raise wards and keep them active as long as it is necessary. We should also barricade all entrances to the Hall. No reason to make their job easier for them."

Lily stared. She knew that her godmother was a successful spellcrafter, a brilliant businesswoman and a genius – probably everyone in Britain knew that -, and she was also aware that Aunt Hermione had taken part in the fighting on Halloween.

But this was a completely new side to her. She spoke calmly, but with such competence and reassurance that obeying her seemed only natural. And every single one of her aunts and uncles fell into place, simply nodded agreement and prepared to do as she said – even Headmistress McGonagall, who never followed a command, ever!

"And then?" Lily's father asked, calm but with the wolf shining through in his glinting eyes. _No one threatens my children and lives_, he had once told her. _No one!_

Strangely enough, Aunt Hermione's lips twitched with amusement at that question.

"We give them Harry, of course," she answered lightly. "He's had years of practice being the bait, haven't you?"

Harry's head twitched, and his hands moved strangely to the sides and upwards. Something else was happening around the table, Lily suddenly noticed, something not intended for the eyes of anyone but an Order member.

"Sure," Harry said, sounding nearly bored. "Let's use the old plan, _again_. Chuck Harry into the lion pit and see what happens."

All around the table, fingers had begun to move and positions shifted. They were preparing for something, but Lily had no idea for what, or why. Why keep secret what you were planning? The enemy was outside and couldn't possibly hear them! Or could he?

"Right then," her father announced loudly. "Let's get the potential hostages out of the way. Students, journalists, everyone who hasn't fought a duel in the past three years and won, over to that door on the right! Follow Bill Weasley, that is the tall young man with the fetching earring over there!"

Obediently, the students started moving to the door that led into a large room under the Great Hall. They were used to doing as someone told them, but the men and women at the other tables were already arguing and jostling.

Lily shared an irritated look with her youngest brother Ted. Grown-ups! They would never discuss their parents' orders in such a situation.

"Stop!" The voice was cold and very menacing, and it took Lily a moment to recognize it as that of her DADA teacher, that diminutive, always slightly nervous man that no one took quite seriously. He was very serious right now.

"One move, one spell and your beloved Headmistress is dead."

Lily – and what sounded like all the other guests – whirled around to the spot where Headmistress McGonagall had stood just a moment ago. But she wasn't among the students anymore.

Instead, she was pressed against Gopman, close to the windows of the hall, her wand lying discarded a few feet away, another wand against her throat. The angle of her head looked painfully unnatural as she tried to avoid contact between Gopman and her skin.

"You're not too old to be spanked, William!" Despite the threat to her life, Headmistress McGonagall was still very much in control of her voice.

"I won't mind killing you, old woman," Gopman hissed. "I've been wanting to for months!"

Something inside of Lily, some deep, instinctive trust that she would be safe, that nothing really bad could ever happen to her, broke in that moment. The view of her beloved Headmistress, threatened and used as a hostage by one of her teachers, the sight of hundreds of kids frightened half to death, it left a mark that would never quite go away.

_And Harry was eleven when he first fought against Voldemort_, she thought numbly.

"You will cease your attempts to fight us, and you will hand over Harry Potter, stunned and unarmed, now!" Gopman was shouting now, but his eyes were still cold and very controlled. He looked downright _dangerous_.

To her right, Ron Weasley gave an exaggerated sigh.

"I told you, love," he remarked to his wife. "It's always the DADA teachers. Always."

"Oi," her father called back playfully. "That's a prejudice! I resent that!"

Lily, along with most other visitors of the Great Hall, was staring at them in disbelief. How could they fool around at a moment like that?

And Harry Potter, auror extraordinaire, standing way out of range to do anything at all, was just shaking his head sadly.

"You really shouldn't have done that, Gopman," he called over. "We might have resolved all this peacefully, but if you threaten one of us, it will only end in blood and tears for you."

"I have your Headmistress," Gopman shouted again, still in control, but with a growing awareness that things didn't quite follow the plan. "And I have orders to kill her!"

"Orders from whom?" Draco now drawled, his face utterly untouched by the tension. He looked every inch the pureblood, curious and even slightly amused. "Are you hearing voices, Gopman? Or did the unicorns tell you to do it?"

"Draco," Harry chastised him calmly. "One mustn't antagonise assassins. Have you learned _nothing _from me?"

"You had better take me seriously, Potter! If you don't come down here right now and give up your wand, I will slit her throat, I swear!" Something like panic was creeping into Gopman's voice.

"You see?" Harry was still talking to Draco as if nothing else mattered. Lily wondered if she was the only sane person left in the room. "He wants to be taken seriously. And he does have a right to it, being a teacher and all that."

"He's also a traitor. And insane," Draco offered, as if these were valid points to be considered in their discussion. "And his face is a very unattractive shade of red."

Harry sighed. "Then he'd better be stopped, hmm?" He asked, as if he really regretted it.

The panic in Gopman's face was steadily replaced by rage, and the way he watched Harry and Draco would have been comical, if not for the wand pressing against the Headmistress' throat.

"I WILL KILL HER, and there's nothing you can do to stop me! You're too far aw…" he yelled, when suddenly he gave a strange gurgle and let go of the Headmistress. Slowly, he tilted to the side and fell. There was a gleaming knife sticking out of his neck.

"I believe he was referring to me," Aunt Hermione stepped from the shadows and accioed the knife back into her hand with a flick of her wrist.

Another flick, and two guests from the press table were immobilised and floating over to where she stood by the corpse of William Gopman, former DADA teacher.

"Those two watched Gopman before he ever lifted his wand, and they haven't even reacted to his threats," she said calmly to no one in particular. "Got any Veritaserum on you, Draco?"

"For you always, love," Draco grinned fiercely and floated a small vial over to her. His eyes moved from Aunt Hermione to Harry.

"It still fascinates me after all these years," he remarked. "With you two in the same room, things just never get boring."

Someone behind Lily collapsed to the floor with a faint thud, probably fainting. Someone to her right swallowed loudly. Lily just stared at her godmother, really _seeing_ her for the first time.

Aunt Hermione had always been unusually muscular (from all the heavy cauldrons I have to lift, because Severus is too lazy), and was brilliant (birth defect, love), and had reflexes like hell (ever seen a potion boiling? There's not much time to rescue your hands). Aunt Hermione _had_ fought in the war (mainly doing research, dear. Those boys were unwilling to open a book if it cost their life), and she _had_ received an Order of Merlin, First Class (they give those out like candy these days).

But she had thrown a _knife_ over a distance of _twelve feet_, and it had hit its mark _perfectly_.

Slowly, all those little facts about the past no one had really explained danced and re-formed in Lily's mind, coalescing into a truth that changed everything.

"She was the _key_ to it all," she whispered, and in that moment, all those court documents, all the conspiracy books and hole-riddled reports made sense, the mentions of double agents, and Occlumency-attacks on Voldemort, and the fact that the Order members treated her like royalty. "She didn't just do _research_, she orchestrated the whole thing!"

A hand fell softly on her shoulder and then she was tucked under her mother's arm, in the warmth of her embrace.

"You are a clever girl," Mum whispered into her ear. "But now let Hermione do her work. We can talk later."

_Let Hermione do her work…_ Merlin! No wonder everybody deferred to her! She was probably the most dangerous person in the room!

Her godmother was smiling as she crouched over their bound and petrified attackers, a cold, dangerous smile that awakened strange instincts in Lily. Obviously, she had been a small, frightened animal in one of her past lives.

"Now, have you really come to play or were you only telling tales?" Aunt Hermione asked pleasantly, opened the vial and let three drops of a clear liquid fall onto one of her prisoner's tongues. Lily couldn't believe that she had ever mistaken her for a harmless researcher. "'Cause I could really use some exercise after all those speeches."

And Harry, still standing at the edge of the platform and watching calmly as his friend administered illegal veritaserum after just having killed the Defence-teacher, suddenly threw his head back and laughed, loudly, freely and without a care in the world.

"Merlin, Hermione, I really missed this!"

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The next part will be up soon – review, please!


	80. Epilogue II

**A/N**: I'm glad you liked the first half, and hope you'll feel the same about this second one. Just let me answer a few questions many of you asked in your reviews:

No, Harry has no children of his own. As you probably noticed, I kind of assumed a slash pairing between him and Draco in this epilogue, though it's so non-graphic you'll have to squint to see it, and since I don't hold with mpreg (my name's not Loretta), that makes children unlikely. I do, however, imagine that he's adopted or cared for a few children, perhaps war-orphans like he was, but that would have opened a whole new can of worms, and if they were actually orphaned by the Death Eaters, they would be too old to attend Hogwarts by now.

No, Hermione and Severus have no children of their own, either. You've offered a number of explanations in your reviews, most of them plausible. Just let me add my own bit: I don't think that Hermione would rush building a family, and as we know from the books, wizards age much slower than muggles. If you look at the age difference between the Weasley children, I am confident that Hermione and Severus could easily have children later in life.

I am also quite sure that neither Severus nor Hermione would want children while engaging in their dangerous work (Brazil, anyone?) – they know what happened to Harry, and they wouldn't want that for children of theirs. So while haven't multiplied yet, it doesn't necessarily mean that they never will. Though they wouldn't need it to have a full and fulfilling life, or at least that's my opinion.

Have fun reading!

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**Epilogue Part II**

Severus had slipped away from the table as soon as the lights went out. There was always a harmless explanation for such an occurrence – though he had never actually encountered a situation in which the harmless explanation was the right one, but one had to keep an open mind - , but it never hurt to be prepared.

So he had pressed Hermione's hand to alert her, had stepped away from the table into the darkness and up to a small side door that led onto a seldom used terrace and from there to the grounds.

Hogwarts wards weren't designed to stop anybody from leaving and Hermione's emergency wards recognised him easily, but even if emergency warding should snap into place, he hadn't lived here for twenty years without learning a few tricks.

He used the close proximity to the castle to send a general detection spell into the areas where students lived and slept. When the spell came back clean, he triggered the additional wards around the dormitories – they hadn't been active when the other wards went down, and they snapped into place without a hitch. It was a good thing that he had taught here for so long – he knew all the procedures and was confident that the students would be safe till the morning.

Making sure that he was out of earshot from anybody and well into the trees, he activated the link to Hermione. It was an ingenious bit of magical technology, although the procedure necessary to create it had been 'icky', to use Hermione's words. But according to the rules of magic, Occlumency needed skin contact, and if that rule could only be tricked by implanting that skin inside the auricle, well, sacrifices had to be made.

_What is happening?_ He asked silently. Instead of answering, she simply shared her eyes and ears with him, another trick they had learned over the years.

Listening to the disembodied voice sprouting nonsense, he wasn't sure whether to laugh or share Hermione's irritation. _Even villains aren't the same any more_, he thought towards her, and felt her answering chuckle of amusement.

_But they managed to unravel the wards, and that's the work of a professional, even if security has relaxed after Voldemort,_ she answered. _We aren't seeing the whole picture here_.

_An inside man?_ It wasn't really a question, but these little backs and forths gave both of them time to think and develop their theories, and he cherished them if for that only.

_At least one_, Hermione thought. _But let's see if I can't flush them out with a bit of action…_

_Remember that none of them are used to regular fighting anymore, except for the aurors,_ Severus warned her, but a part of him was disappointed that he would miss her show. She and Harry were a beautiful team, playing one opponent against the other with the ease acquired only over many years.

He wondered if any of the aurors working under Harry knew whom their Head of Department chose as partner for his more dangerous missions. Probably not. Aurors were even worse idiots today than they'd been twenty years back.

_As if you had to remind me of that, the way you always complain about it when we meet them,_ Hermione's amused voice cut into his thoughts. _Now, ready to do a bit of scouting for me?_

_On it._

Away from the Great Hall and the dormitories, he could use a series of charms to determine the numbers and positions of their opponents. The results weren't exactly a relief.

_Thirty-six in the vicinity_, he informed her. _Positioned around the Great Hall. There's no safe way to get the students out, and no easy way for backup to get in. _

_Then we'll have to keep the students safe inside the castle. My wards are holding so far, so we should have a bit of time for preparations. Authorities?_

_I'll take care of it_, Severus promised. The best way to go about this was sending a message to an Unspeakable of their trust, so that somebody in the Ministry would be informed, but they would be spared the aurors arriving and complicating everything. Hostage situations were always handled best by small teams, and he and Hermione would have been called in for this sort of thing anyway.

With a flick of his wand, his _patronus_ vanished into the night, bearing a message to one of Luna's operatives. Again he scanned the grounds, confirming his first results but adding another two opponents that were positioned closer to the lake.

_Thirty-eight, now_, he informed Hermione.

_Thanks. Care to reduce the numbers a bit, Severus? _She sounded excited and fierce, as she always did when she let the Master Spy out to play.

He grinned, his glittering eyes and bared teeth matching the fierceness in her voice. He loved to play, too.

_Anything for you love, _he promised. _Good hunting._

_0_

0o0

0

After the corpse had been removed, the students calmed by the Headmistress and the prisoners interrogated by Harry and Aunt Hermione, they decided to stick to the original plan.

Students and civilians would be evacuated, Bill, Minerva and Luna would erect wards hopefully strong enough to keep the attackers out, and the rest of them would use the time left to prepare the Great Hall for battle.

It sounded totally surreal to Lily, who could not even imagine a battle taking place inside of Hogwarts, but the two prisoners, now stunned and moved safely out of the way, reminded her painfully of the reality whenever she looked at them.

This was truly happening. She was in the middle of one of the stories her parents used to tell them. And she was determined to fight.

She helped organise the students and escort them to the vault-like room below the Great Hall. She flipped tables to the side and stacked benches into obstacles close to the entrance doors.

And while she did all that, she watched Hermione, old Moody, Draco and Harry moving through the Hall, giving orders and calling questions out to each other, quite obviously in their elements.

They expected a little more than thirty invaders, and Hermione had been able to give them specifics about their armaments and attack patterns, although Lily didn't have the slightest idea where her information came from.

Again she wondered where the Professor had vanished, and how he could have known what would happen as soon as the lights went out.

To think that she had grown up with these people and never known what they were capable of… To think that she had considered Aunt Hermione boring if brilliant…

"What are you still doing here, Lily?" Harry had suddenly appeared from nowhere, and she very nearly jumped in surprise.

"Hey," she said, aiming for coolness and failing miserably. "This is where the fighting will be, isn't it?"

"It is," he agreed calmly. "And that's why you should be inside the warded room right now."

"With the other children?" Despite the situation, she felt anger rise inside her. "I'm no child anymore, Harry, I'm seventeen. I know what you and the others did when you were my age, and I don't need to be protected!"

"I know," Harry said. One of the things she liked most about her godfather was that he always took her seriously, no matter what the situation. He had explained things to her that her parents thought her too young for, he had told her stories her parents wanted to hide away from her. And now he looked at her like he would look at an equal, no matter her age.

"You are a very capable woman, Lily," he continued. "But this isn't about you. This is about your parents and all the other people that love you. Twenty years ago, we swore that we would never again let our children fight for us. You believe it is your privilege to risk your life, and you're right. But it's your parents' privilege to protect you. Do you really want to take that away from them?"

Her shoulders sagged. One of the things she liked least about her godfather was the fact that he was nearly always right. And could tell her so in a manner that made her agree no matter what she wanted.

"Okay," she gave in after a short moment. "I'll be downstairs then…"

And in that moment, the great doors exploded inwards, filling the room with wooden shrapnel and dust. Their enemies had broken through the wards.

0

0o0

0

Hermione's eyes snapped to the doors of the Great Hall as soon as Severus' warning appeared inside her head.

"Brace yourselves!" She shouted, but already explosions rocked the old oak doors, and splinters and dust filled the air.

They had sliced through her wards quicker than anticipated, another thing confirming the professionalism of this group. A small part of her wondered about their reasons and resources, while another part informed Severus and her eyes darted through the Hall, making sure that everyone was safe and the children out of the way.

She saw Lily, half hidden behind Harry, and Ron and Ginny, who'd been determined to stay even though they hadn't duelled for a long time. But apart from them, everyone who couldn't defend themselves was out of the way.

She hadn't even noticed the knife in her hand until the first cloaked attacker appeared and it was flying towards him, flying true as always. She summoned it back without a second thought, coordinating the double images of her own and Severus' visual input in her head and determining the exact attack pattern.

They were conservative but very aggressive. Professionals, from their battle robes and stances more like mercenaries than fanatics. She really was beginning to wonder about this group.

She signalled Harry, who had gotten Lily to safety and was now moving towards her across the Hall, using tables and benches for protection, to proceed. A flick of his wand and his voice echoed through the now nearly empty room.

"Whoever you are, we give you one warning. Retreat, or we will not bother with disarming spells!"

Whether it was their knifed-down comrade or Harry's words that held them back, but no one else stepped through the ruins of the door for a moment. Once more Hermione's eyes swept through the Hall, assessing their status. They were thirteen altogether, Harry, Draco, Neville's protection squad of three aurors, Remus, Tonks, Moody, Kingsley, Ginny, Ron, Minerva and she.

It had been some time since she'd fought in such a large group, but most of them had had extensive training, and their positioning around the room was good. Not that she planned on letting their attackers advance far beyond the first line defence, which was manned by her, Harry, and Draco.

"Remember?" Harry whispered now, grinning broadly. He was having entirely too much fun with this. "Twenty years ago? Five of us against Voldemort?"

"I expect you want one of us to say something asinine like 'those were the times', now, don't you?" Draco commented mildly. "Well, let me say that I prefer today immensely."

"Me too," Harry answered after a moment, but he was still grinning. "It's just that paperwork can't compare to this!"

"We still don't know what 'this' is," Hermione cautioned them, _her _eyes fixed on the door, while Severus' were watching the side door the attackers had chosen as their entrance. He agreed, in her mind. "And until we do, it is a dangerous situation."

"You're getting very serious in your old age, Hermione," Harry teased. "And I bet Sev's already decimated them."

"He's having fun, too," she admitted after a moment, but then stiffened slightly when the sensory input from Severus changed.

"Here comes their leader," she whispered, and her friends snapped to attention.

A figure in black robes and a dark green cloak stepped through the door, glowing slightly in the light of the strong shield spell that surrounded it. The stranger – from the size and built most likely a woman, was gingerly raising her robes to avoid torn edged from the wreckage. Yes, definitely a woman.

Harry, still the designated driver on negotiation-issues, cast an equally strong shield spell around himself and rose to his full height.

"Tell us what you really want, and perhaps we can still conclude this peacefully," he offered, his voice calm and very much in control.

"Peacefully?" The woman's voice was still magically distorted, but it sounded shriller than before, slightly unhinged, Hermione thought with growing unease. Nothing was worse than a crazy terrorist, in her humble opinion.

"You dropped peaceful out of the window, _Harry Potter_, when you killed our Lord and destroyed his vision twenty years ago!"

_Oh_, Hermione thought, sharing a frustrated glance with Draco. _One of those. _

They'd had problems with deranged would-be followers of Voldemort before, those who couldn't let go of the past or, perhaps even worse, thought that by defeating Harry Potter they could somehow take up from where Voldemort had stopped.

But that type of 'villain' was usually unorganised, badly informed, equipped worse, and slightly pathetic altogether. Certainly unable to slice through Hogwarts' wards and attack with a team of forty mercenaries.

"That was decades ago," Harry said now. "Why throw your life away for something that is long over?"

"It is _not_ over," the woman snapped. Yes. Definitely unhinged. "I was _there_ when you attacked them and made their lives a living hell! I have to live with it every day!"

"I never attacked anybody," Harry answered, calmly, reasonably. "Voldemort came after me, and I…"

"DON'T ARGUE WITH ME," the woman screamed. "I'll have you admit to it before the end, Potter, I'll have you admitting to everything! Attack them!"

The mercenaries obeyed without hesitation, and Hermione's mind shifted smoothly into battle mode. She gestured to the rest of their impromptu squad to take out the attackers advancing on the flanks, while she, Draco and Harry would concentrate on the central block, and then the first men were upon her.

She fired off a quick series of stunners, then pivoted on her left leg and stamped the heel of her boot into her attacker's forehead. He went down and she blocked against a vicious cutting curse and answered with a _sectumsempra_. One knife found its target, another one whirled through the air and nailed a raised arm to the wall behind it.

Four down.

Another stunner took care of a man who tried to sneak up behind Draco, and while she blinded two more with a directed flashlight spell, another one had an unfortunate accident with a fireball.

Eight down.

Her side was doing quite well so far, with nearly twenty attackers down and a few more wounded. Ron looked a bit disgruntled because no enemy had reached him yet, but he was smart enough not to leave his assigned position. His children were hiding behind that door, after all.

Four men were bearing down on Harry and she decided to help him with that. Her knives slashed and spells sizzled through the air. She blocked another attacker's disembowelling curse and answered fire, and noticed that their mysterious leader hadn't joined the fight. She was still standing close to the door, guarded by two of her mercenaries and the glowing blue bubble of a very strong shield spell, watching the battle quietly. Assessing their reactions and skills.

Her behaviour was starting to creep Hermione out, and while she twisted out of the way of a burning hex, kicked the legs of her enemy away and conjured ropes around him before he hit the ground, she considered asking Severus to take care of her.

But that spell bubble looked rather strong, and she didn't want to give up her trump, not before it wasn't necessary. Having a partner hidden away in the shadows had saved her life on more than one occasion.

Fifteen down. And the battle was nearly over.

It seemed that their mysterious attacker was going through the same realization, for she lifted her wand to her throat, and when she spoke, her voice echoed sharply through the Hall.

"Regroup!"

A pitiful number of mercenaries limped back to their employer, and those who did were in no state to further defend her. Still, no reason for carelessness. She gestured to the others to re-take their safe positions, and half grinned towards Moody, who nodded approvingly.

Again, Harry took the spear point.

"Don't you think it's a bit late to negotiate?" He asked, less angry than curious as to what this woman was up to now. There had, after all, been no casualties on their side, and the whole attack seemed somewhat lame.

But the woman just lifted her hand, demanding silence from her mercenaries, and something in the line of her shoulders told Hermione that she was satisfied.

"On the contrary," she said coldly. "It's just the right time, now that my spells had time enough to take a hold."

"Your spells?" Harry's eyes did not leave their attacker for a second, but Hermione was on it already, running detection and diagnosis spells so fast that the images and lights blurred into each other.

The results confused her, but still she sent them towards Harry and Draco with a swish and flick, and saw her confusion mirrored.

"An air-directioning charm?" Harry asked the woman sceptically. "What good will a fresh breeze do you?"

_Ideas?_ Hermione asked Severus in her mind, and felt her own undefined worry echo back to her.

_Assuming it's a compound-spell_, Severus' rich voice whispered in her thoughts. _There are many hundred possible combinations, most of them completely harmless. But others…_

Silently, Hermione agreed with him. This had been too well planned, too thoroughly prepared to end with a stupid mistake. Whoever this woman was, she had the mark of someone dangerous.

As if to confirm her thoughts, their unknown attacker now chuckled, cold, low, and decidedly threatening.

"I think you will find that the air is being moved away from me, not towards me," she commented. "And what good it will do… well, that depends on what happens when I open this…"

She reached inside a pocket, and when her hand emerged she was holding…

Hermione stared at the vial in silent shock. It couldn't be.

But she had only ever heard of one potion that sparkled pearly blue like this, and it was a rumour, nothing but a whisper they had encountered during their research. Severus' shock mixed with hers, coursing through her veins, leaving only cold clarity.

This couldn't be, but if it was… then they were all in mortal danger.

Harry had noticed the sudden tension in her, but they couldn't communicate without interrupting the negotiations, and they needed to know that this woman was planning, _right now_.

She signalled him to continue, and added a little sign they had agreed on years ago. Abruptly, his eyes grew hard. He knew now that this might be a matter of life and death.

"What is in the vial," he demanded, the authority of his position and experience settling around his shoulders like a cloak. "You had better not be playing games with us."

"I don't like you enough o play with you," she hissed back. "And this is certainly no toy. Tell me, _Harry Potter_, have you ever heard of the _Magic Eater_?"

Hermione felt bile rising into her mouth. Draco to her right had gone deathly pale, and Severus had turned into cold, grim stone inside her mind. But it _couldn't _be!

"No," Harry said, slightly hoarse. He knew how frightened they were, and _that_ frightened him.

"All that time among snakes, and still you know nothing about poison," the woman mocked him. "Go on, Malfoy. Be a good little blood traitor and tell your pet-auror what he is dealing with."

She was gloating now, revelling in her superior knowledge and the belief that they were completely in her hand. She had no idea of the rapid exchange of Severus and Hermione, foremost potions master and brilliant spellcrafter, taking place right under her nose, or she wouldn't have been so sure of herself.

_She has anchored the air-directional to both her shield bubble and Hogwarts itself, Severus. It will take a while to unravel it. _

_I can cut off the air flows to the dormitories…_

_She linked those, too?_ Hermione's horror filled their bond for a heartbeat. This was mass murder!

_She's nothing if not thorough._

Hermione took a deep breath to compose herself, and saw that Draco had risen to his feet. He was still white with tension, but his face and voice held no emotion at all.

"The _Magic Eater_ is a legend among potion makers," he said quietly, his eyes fixed on the sparkling blue liquid. "It was rumoured to be created by a 19th century master, but his notes were never found, only the effect of the potion – a village, filled with nothing but dead bodies."

He took a deep breath, and Hermione used the pause to continue her inner dialogue.

_We might save the students in the dorm, but we will be infected and dead within a minute. And I doubt that the makeshift wards around the others will hold it back… there are more than two hundred people below us, most of them children, Severus…_

_We _could_ slice through her shield bubble, given enough time…_

_But we won't have that sort of time, not unless we can keep her talking._

"The potion's active ingredient becomes airborne immediately, and it's incredibly fast," Draco continued, his voice now hardening. "One breath is enough, and once you're infected there's no help. The potion turns your own magical core against you. First you become a squib, then you're dead. Judging from the faces of the victims, it is a most painful way to die."

Draco was buying them time already with his overly-detailed description, but it wouldn't be enough. Severus and Hermione knew it both.

_Inform our contacts outside, Severus. If this goes wrong, Hogwarts needs to be isolated immediately. _

_It won't 'go wrong', my love._

_Still._

"And you expect me to believe that _you_ found a way to produce this potion?" Harry now asked.

The woman actually seemed amused.

"I spent years preparing for this moment, Potter. But if you doubt me, I could offer a demonstration," she said, her hand moving slowly towards the vial's stopper.

"No!" Draco's shout echoed through the unnaturally quiet Great Hall, loud and quick so that Harry wouldn't have to lose face by backing down.

The woman chuckled.

"Then I assume that you are finally taking me seriously?" She inquired.

"What do you want?" Harry asked, too angry and frustrated now to hide his feelings completely. Everyone in this room was a professional, and still they were stuck in an impossible situation, played like fools.

Something changed in the woman's stance. She leaned forwards slightly, and her hand tightened around the deadly vial.

"I want to _know_," she whispered, greed and desperation and madness all mixed together into an awful blend. "I want to know what really happened all those years ago, when you defeated the Dark Lord."

Harry's eyes widened in disbelief.

"All this effort and death, just to satisfy your curiosity?"

"It isn't curiosity," she hissed. "It's the only thing that ever mattered to me! So tell me – what really happened? Not the nice tale your pet-Minister told tonight, but the real one. I want to know who destroyed my life twenty years ago, and how they did it."

The muscles in Harry's face tightened nearly imperceptible.

"You shouldn't believe the conspiracy theories," he said, very calm and controlled now.

"I don't," the woman answered curtly. "But I know that things weren't as clean and easy as your petty Order made them look. I _know_ that you had someone inside the Death Eaters, and I _know_ that she tricked the Dark Lord into the Tintagel attack. It was an ambush, staged and prepared, and I want to know _how_ and _who_!"

"That is not what happened," Harry tried again, but the woman's patience had run out.

"Tell me NOW_," _she demanded shrilly. "Or this potion might just slip through my fingers!"

As Harry tried to prevent the inevitable, Hermione's thoughts raced alongside Severus'.

Who could this woman be? Few people outside the Order had known these details, and she had made sure to keep an eye on all of those. The only possible connection might be a Death Eater of their outer circle – she _had_ appeared at several balls and festivities, if always in disguise. But all the key players had been caught, and they and their families questioned. She couldn't imagine that she had overlooked someone.

Perhaps she had just heard the wrong thing at the wrong time? Conspiracy theories had gone wild after the battle, and for once the Quibbler had actually been a moderating influence. Perhaps she had taken the facts and put them together in the right way?

She had been wrong before. This wasn't another misguided effort to resurrect Voldemort or build a new empire on his name. This woman was personally affected, and she had obviously dedicated her life to have these questions answered at last.

She could try to use that to her advantage, play her just right, bargain on the fact that she wanted knowledge, not their death…

But there were too many variables to determine. She couldn't risk all those children on a hunch, and if things went downhill, all this would end in a catastrophe.

Inside her head, Severus agreed, although his heart ached for her.

_Go along with it, love, and try to gather as much information as you can. Play it safe this once._

_I'll have to tell her. She might notice any lies. _

_I know. But you just have to keep her occupied. And when you see an opening, I'll be waiting in her shadow._

Plans and calculations flooded from mind to mind, being enriched and discarded and tweaked at until they had a perfect strategy ready, waiting for a chance to be used. Severus was just outside the hall now, ready to do his part in a heartbeat, but she would have to lay the groundwork for that.

She opened the link between them wide, readying it for the data that would pass between them, and hid her wand in the folds of her battle robes. Talking and slicing at the same time wouldn't be the easiest thing she had ever done.

_I love you,_ she whispered inside their secret place. _I will always love you, Severus._

_Everyday I love you more, my Hermione._

She took a long breath and readied herself, fortified herself against what she would have to say. She didn't like this one bit, but at least she was chiefly among friends. And this _woman_ wouldn't have much opportunity to spread tales after this night.

Gesturing towards Harry and Draco to stay calm and to everyone to wait for her command, she stood, and her heart beat wildly in her throat.

"If you want me to tell my tale, you'd better show your face first," she demanded curtly. "I don't like talking to strangers."

0

0o0

0

Harry had told her to get cover and out of the way, and so Lily crawled along the line of unused tables and benches until she'd reached one corner of the Great Hall. She'd hidden behind an old table and an arm chair, knees tucked under her chin, wand ready in her white knuckled hand. She could see the entire Great Hall and was close enough to hear everything, but she'd traded that immediately for a safe place with the other children.

The fighting was unbelievable, like nothing she'd ever seen at her duel club or the friendly duels some of her uncles and aunts had staged over the years. Her mother and father were _brilliant _at all this, and Harry kicked as much ass as she had always expected, but it was Aunt Hermione that really blew her away.

She jumped and spun and kicked and _twisted_, and somehow there was always a knife in her hand and she was actually using it to cast spells.

It looked like a weird mixture of wizarding duels, Star Wars and the kung-fu action movies she hadn't been allowed to see until recently, only that this was real, and it was her _godmother_ doing it!

_Actually_ kicking a man in the face and then gutting another one (and Lily felt slightly nauseous as she watched that, but betraying her position by retching really wasn't the way she wanted to go), and looking so fierce, so feral that she was simply terrifying.

And another thing very different from a movie? Her parents and aunts and uncles were moving so fast, fighting with such precision and aggression that it was over before it had really begun, and Lily felt as if she had missed most of it (probably something to be thankful for).

But then their enemy raised a vial of some liquid, and Hermione and the others stiffened in fear. Something had just gone very, very wrong.

Lily trembled at the thought of all those students, her brothers and cousins and friends, dying from a potion that would eat up their magic and then consume their bodies, she trembled violently, and now she finally understood what the Order members had always told her, what Uncle Neville had said this very evening.

_It was anything but heroic back then. It was overwhelming and terrifying, and we all had to do things we weren't ready for…_

Oh, how much she wanted it all to be a dream now, to wake up in her safe dorm room and have nothing ahead of her than boring classes and homework.

But this was painfully real, and as Aunt Hermione stood, giving into the attacker's demands, Lily found that she wanted to turn away and cover her ears, to honour her godmother's privacy.

Only that it was a very bad idea to turn her back on a potential attack kept Lily from following through.

"If you want me to tell my tale, you'd better show your face first. I don't like talking to strangers," Aunt Hermione now said, her voice colder than Lily had ever heard it. If she had looked dangerous before, she now sounded it.

Lily saw the unknown woman twitch, as if in surprise and then visibly hesitate. Even Lily understood why. If she showed her face, she committed herself to either killing them all or becoming a wanted criminal.

Lily wondered why Aunt Hermione had upped the stakes this way. Was she planning something? But what could they hope to do against such a poison?

Lily guessed that a bubble-head charm would keep her safe for a while, but even she could only keep it up for about five minutes, and she was top of her Charms class! And if the potion spread too fast, the students and guests would be dead before they even knew what was going on.

So there was no reason for their attacker to follow Hermione's wish. But still her free hand rose towards her hood, grasped the cloth firmly… and lowered it.

For a moment, the silence in the Great Hall was absolute, as if the walls themselves were waiting breathlessly.

Then, Aunt Hermione's voice broke through the tension, disbelieving and slightly higher than usual.

"Pansy…" she whispered.

The woman nodded, her face twisting into an ugly grimace.

"Pansy Parkinson," she agreed grimly. "I gather you suspected someone a bit further form home? But then you _war heroes_ never noticed anyone else, not even those right under your noses.

"But… your father was only a member of the Outer Circle, barely involved in what was going on…" Aunt Hermione said, confusion making an unusual appearance on her face.

The woman – Pansy – snorted bitterly. "Involved enough to get his estates confiscated and be shunned by the public," she spat, but then a change came over her, and she grew very quiet.

"Mother left us," she said. "And suddenly we were poor, and no one would talk to us anymore. My father couldn't bear it. Everything he had believed in was gone, and the name of our house gone to ruin. He killed himself, and my mother, the blood-traitor, married a _mudblood_, not that it helped her at all. So you see? You destroyed my life, all of you, and you didn't even notice!"

Lily saw tears glittering in her eyes, and wondered how she would manage to deal with something like that – her father dead, her mother gone…

Well, certainly not by becoming a terrorist and mass murderer, that much she was sure of.

Aunt Hermione's voice had softened somewhat when she spoke next. Perhaps she had thought the same thing.

"I am sorry for your loss, Pansy," she said. "There were too many deaths even after Voldemort's fall, and I admit that some of them were caused by our side. But your father and mother made their decisions freely, and their hands weren't guided by us."

"Don't you dare patronize me, Granger," Pansy Parkinson screeched. "You with your goody-two-shoes ways and your perfect career! I don't want your pity, I want to know what happened! What did you do? You'd better tell me quickly, or I won't answer for the consequences…"

She shook the potion vial, and Lily's breath caught in sudden fear.

Aunt Hermione's face twisted, then she nodded, resigning to it.

"Where to start?" She thought aloud, but Pansy answered immediately.

"What was the plan?" She demanded. "How did you do it? How _could_ you fool the Dark Lord?"

Aunt Hermione chuckled.

"It was surprisingly simple," she answered, but the hollow ring in her tone told a different story. "Once we had infiltrated the Inner Circle, we gave our double agent a false prophecy, one that made Voldemort believe he could forever destroy Harry, if only he got him to "an ancient place on an ancient night". He accepted the story hook, line and sinker. Next, we fed him a bogus reason why Harry, Ron and I would spend Halloween night at Tintagel, and he believed that, too. We only had to ambush him and force him through a ritual that forever destroyed his should. Easy."

She had spoken slowly, her face impassive as she told a tale Lily had heard so many times – with one exception.

In the stories of her parents and Aunts and Uncles, there had never been a double agent, never an infiltrator that fooled Voldemort himself. Lily's eyes widened as she connected another set of dots.

Pansy had mentioned a woman, and unless one member of the Order had vanished and never been mentioned again, that meant…"

Lily's eyes widened further. _Impossible_!

"Who?" Pansy Parkinson asked, the words hard and fast. "Who planned it, and who was the double agent?"

For a second, Aunt Hermione hesitated, and an expression of pain darted across her face.

"I," she then admitted. "On both accounts."

Rage flooded their attacker's face.

"Impossible," she shouted, echoing Lily's thoughts. "You were a mudblood and a mere girl! The Dark Lord would never have…"

"The Dark Lord called me his pet and praised me beyond all others," Hermione interrupted, her face expressionless. "He gave me power over the purebloods in his Inner Circle, and in the end I defeated him in a battle of minds. Your precious Dark Lord was nothing but a crazed half blood, and he fell to the schemes of a girl. This is the truth, Pansy. I am sorry."

"No," the other woman whispered, her hands trembling. Lily wasn't sure what had shocked her most about Aunt Hermione's explanation, the fact that a mudblood had managed such a feat, or that Voldemort himself had been a halfblood.

"No! My father described her to me! She was like a queen of darkness, he said, and everyone feared her…"

Something about Aunt Hermione changed, then. She seemed to grow taller, her eyes glittered darkly and her lips formed a smile that looked both dangerous and strangely sensual.

Lily shivered. Despite all the things she had learned tonight, her aunt had still been her aunt. But now she looked like a stranger to her, like a Hermione she had never met and didn't really want to meet, either.

She looked like a queen of darkness, alright.

"They were in my hand, all those wealthy, pureblooded men, and my fist could have crushed them any day," she whispered, her voice smoky and full of triumph. "They loved me, and feared me, and trusted me despite my blood. So much power, so much magic, and yet their victory depended on me. And I betrayed them. I defeated Voldemort, I killed Lucius Malfoy, who even then loved me like he had never loved anyone, and I laughed as I did it!"

"Malfoy…" Pansy Parkinson whispered, her eyes darting from Draco to Aunt Hermione and back. All her arrogance and anger seemed gone, washed away by a revelation she had never expected.

"He was my lover," the stranger with her aunt's face hissed. "I seduced him, and he did everything for me. He introduced me to Voldemort, he supported my inclusion in the Inner Circle, and even when he tortured me, he loved me desperately."

She laughed, and all of Pansy Parkinson's front seemed child's play in comparison to that laughter.

"You thought you knew everything, didn't you, Pansy? Safe among your snakes, your father a pureblood, and you thought you had understood that world. But you knew nothing of its darkness, its grandeur, its pull. Evil has its own beauty, its own morale, but you never even glanced it, you and your family and your pathetic intrigues. They were kings among wizards, and I their queen, and they never saw it coming."

"But how could they?" The other woman whispered. She was sobbing now, her face red and blotchy, and looking strangely like a child that had been denied a toy. "How could they allow you in, when my father never even got an audience? How could they forget everything they stood for?"

Hermione's eyes and voice grew hard. She raised her head, and her eyes fixed Pansy's with a look that left no room for questions.

"They were idiots," she said. "And they paid for it. EVERYBODY DOWN!"

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Draco's body reacted automatically to Hermione's command. One moment he was on his feet by Harry's side, watching Pansy with disbelief and growing horror, the next he lay flat on his stomach, wand ready to protect his family and himself.

A blast of light raced through the Great Hall at about shoulder height, pulverizing everything in its wake. It would have cut Draco in half where he stood, but even so it was only strong enough to slice through Pansy's shield bubble and destroy it.

She shrieked in surprise and fear, and her hand darted to the stopper, to release the potion and kill them all.

She wasn't quick enough.

Down swooped a crow, its black feathers glistening in the candlelight, and Pansy shrieked again.

Before she or anyone else had time to realize what had happened, Pansy's hands were empty, the crow was settling on Hermione's shoulders, and the potion was safely transferred from its beak to her hand.

Hermione smiled up at the bird.

"Thank you Severus," she said. She was the only one standing in the room now, and her wand was trained firmly on the sobbing Pansy, who had fallen to her knees. "Do you want to stay that way, or could you be bothered to transform back?"

The crow cocked its head, then hopped to the ground and morphed back into Severus Snape, black robes billowing around him like an echo of his animagus' wings.

"In the end, she was just an amateur," he remarked quietly, his voice rich and very soft.

Hermione smiled softly, and for a moment, her head found its resting place on his chest, black cloaks melting into another in absolute trust. They would be alright, Draco thought, just as they always were as long as they stood together.

Harry jumped to his feet and started stunning and binding the few surviving mercenaries. They were disoriented by the blast and gave no resistance, too overwhelmed by the sudden change of fortune.

Draco followed Harry's example slowly. There was a reason he had chosen a Potions Mastery over this sort of life, and although he could still duel with the best of them, the death and the noise and confusion of this sickened him.

After years of worrying about how closely he resembled his father, he had found out quickly that peace had turned him into an entirely different person. A life of research, useful work and small comforts was what he wanted.

This just made him feel sad and tired, and the waste of another Slytherin's life, spent with revenge and madness instead of something useful, made his chest ache.

Pansy was lying on the ground now, knees drawn up nearly to her chin, sobbing softly. She had probably spent the past twenty years of her life planning this, preparing for what she imagined as her ultimate triumph – a truly Slytherin thing to do.

But it hadn't given her satisfaction. Instead, it had destroyed the last things she treasured in her life, the memory of her family and her belief in Voldemort.

Gently, he searched her pockets and took her wand from her. She offered no fight – there was nothing left inside her to fight.

_Another one of the lost generation_, he thought sadly. _Twenty years, and it's still poisoning lives_.

"Come," he said gently. "Get up, Pansy. The aurors will be here any minute, and they shouldn't see you like this."

They could kill each other on the battlefield, but in the end Slytherins always stuck together.

She jerked away from his hands.

"Don't touch me, blood traitor," she hissed, but there was no venom left in her voice.

"I know," he whispered. There was nothing else to say, no way to console her and soften the pain of her past and her future, but this much he could say without lying. "I understand."

"_You_," she spat. "How could you ever understand? After changing sides in _just _the right moment, the Slytherin prince abandoning his followers. You were always on the lucky side of life, weren't you? Never a care in the world!"

Draco chuckled softly and reached out again. "I guess that's not a bad way to be remembered," he said, and this time she didn't resist his help.

She was limp in his arms as he helped her stand, and Harry sent a questioning glance at him, silently asking if he needed help.

Draco shook his head. This was his task, and it had been for many years. The Gryffindors might have rebuilt this world and made it a safer place, but someone had to pick up the lost Slytherins and care for them, and the only one left to do it was Draco.

"I'll take care of her," he said, and the understanding that echoed in Harry's smile thawed some of the ice around his heart.

0

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It hadn't been terribly exciting down in the room below the Great Hall. Most of the students and guests hadn't really understood what was going on, though Ted thought he had a pretty good idea – listening to his family's war stories for years had taught him a few things.

A few journalists had demanded to go out and 'investigate' (longs words, why did grown-ups need them?), but the Headmistress and Aunt Luna and Uncle Bill had been firm. No one was to leave this room until the danger was over.

Before they started casting the wards, the Headmistress had collected Order children and moved them away from the rest a bit.

"You know what is going on?" she had asked, looking at them all, one by one.

Everyone nodded.

"Then I need your help," she said, and Ted couldn't help but feel a bit proud. Headmistress McGonagall _needed_ him!

"The other students aren't prepared for this sort of thing. They need to be distracted. Choose games that aren't too noisy and don't involve much running around. You have my permission to use small amounts of magic. I trust you to know what won't meddle with the wards."

"Yes, Headmistress," they all had agreed, still on their best behaviour.

And so they played twenty-questions (a muggle game that was all the fashion at the moment), and Make-Umbitch-Squeal, and even run-and-hide in the part of the room furthest away from the doors.

Sometimes they heard a faint noise echoing down from the Great Hall, and once there was a loud crash and a scream, but most of it was waiting and keeping the other students calm.

Ted liked staying up late, and he liked knowing more than the upper classes, too, but even that got boring after a while. So he was pretty relieved when finally they heard Uncle Ron's voice through the door.

"It's over," he called out. "You can open up now!"

But the Headmistress wasn't stupid, and so she asked the security question Ted had learned along with how to use his emergency portkey. Though he'd never understood what it meant, really.

"Who's our spy?"

The answer came back in Uncle Ron's deep, easygoing voice, along with a chuckle.

"Mata Hari. Open up!"

The wards were barely down when the door banged open and their parents flew into the room, ignoring everyone else in favour of checking their children.

Ted got hugged a lot – _again!_ – and then his father took his hand tight, as if he'd never let go again.

Ted wanted to ask what had happened, but he knew that they wouldn't tell him in front of all the strangers, and so he supposed that he'd have to wait until they were alone. He was just glad that no one seemed hurt and that the attackers had been taken away by aurors.

On the whole, the evening hadn't gone bad, he'd think later as he lay in his bed in the dorms. The eating had been cut short, but so had the speeches, and he'd gotten something from the kitchen before his parents had tucked him in.

His parents had been wearing that look again, and Ted worried that they'd keep an extra-careful eye on him for the next months, but they had also praised him for being smart and reacting just the right way, and Harry had shook his hand and told him that he'd make a first rate auror in front of _all the other students_.

The only thing that made him a bit jealous was that Lily had been allowed to stay upstairs with the grown-ups, had seen the whole thing and _refused_ to talk about it.

How unfair was that? The one time any of them had seen the Order of the Phoenix in action, and not a word to her brothers? Well, he would certainly think of a prank or two for the winter holiday. That'd show her!

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Remus _forced_ himself to wait until the last of their attackers were tied up and stunned, but the moment the last of them slumped to the ground he was across the room, and his daughter in his arms.

She was keeping up the brave front even now, but he could feel her trembling, and his embrace tightened around her.

"It's alright now," he whispered, cursing Pansy Parkinson, himself and all the Gods that she had seen this, that she'd had stripped a piece of her innocence away. "You're safe. It's over."

She answered his hug for a moment, her hands surprisingly strong and steady, but then she stepped back and he reluctantly let her go.

"It's okay, Dad," she said, and she even found a smile for him. Just like her mother. "I'm fine."

Remus took a deep breath, and felt Dora before he saw her join them. The hug was repeated, and so were the reassurances on both sides. Slowly, he felt the fear inside him vanish, to be replaced with an immense feeling of relief.

Dora kept one hand on Lily's shoulder, as if to reassure herself that she was still here, and her eyes were searching their daughter's face carefully, but her smile was warm and easy.

"That was some anniversary, eh?" She asked lightly, and Lily nodded.

"You could say that," she said, then swallowed. "This Pansy… who is she?"

A yearmate of Harry and the others," Remus answered. "Slytherin. We obviously underestimated her connections to the Death Eaters, but who could have imagined – after all these years…"

Lily nodded absently, something else on her mind. Her eyes were fixed on the small group around Pans, more specifically on Hermione. Yes. They would need to talk about that.

"Why did you never tell me?" Lily asked, and there were many things hidden in that questions, disappointment and anger, curiosity and fear. "You made all of us believe that she's just a harmless researcher, when she's really…"

She gestured helplessly, unable to put the revelations of the evening into words.

Remus sighed. He was tired and wanted nothing more than to sit down and hug his wife and children, but Lily was filled to the brim with what she had seen and heard. She deserved an answer, especially since they would ask her to keep all of it a secret.

"We discussed it," he answered, sharing another look with Dora. "It isn't a nice story. Hermione nearly died, and we all did things we aren't proud of. But in the end it was her decision, and she didn't want it known. We honour that wish."

Lily shuddered. "Did she really have an affair with Lucius Malfoy?"

Draco had told their children about his father (though that version had been strictly edited), and the disgust and horror in Lily's voice told them that the story had been impressive.

"We honour her wishes," Remus replied evenly, though he felt worry creep into his heart.

"Yes, I can understand that," Lily answered. "Especially considering how the press is hounding Harry. But why didn't you tell us, the family? Why did we have to live with a lie?"

Now Dora sighed, and her hand on Lily's shoulder tightened.

"It isn't easy to deal with the knowledge that someone was a spy, that someone hurt and killed people for information. There were misunderstandings and difficulties. And just imagine how Ted would react, knowing what you know now."

Lily swallowed, and much of the anger vanished from her eyes. "He would be afraid at first," she whispered slowly. "And then he would treat her like someone special, like a hero."

Dora nodded. "And she wouldn't want that," she continued. "She loves all of you, and she loves being the slightly boring aunt that helps with your school projects and only ever gives you books and sugar-free sweets. Why would she want to be someone else to you?"

Lily nodded, her eyes still on Hermione. She asked no more questions.

Together they watched silently as the aurors arrived and arrested Pansy and her fighters, as Minerva and Harry took over the proceedings and Hermione melted into the background with Severus, raising provisionary wards to keep Hogwarts safe for tonight.

Together they entered the large room blew the Great Hall, collected Ted and Sirius, who were rather bored and had no idea of the danger they'd been in, and sent them off to bed after a quick meal. Together they helped Minerva answer the guests' questions and saw the journalists off with the promise of a press conference tomorrow.

It was long past midnight when everything was done, and Remus saw his own exhaustion mirrored on the faces of his wife and daughter.

But there was something he needed to say before they parted for the night.

Taking Lily's hand into both of his, he pressed it gently.

"I am so, so proud of you, my little flower," he told her. "You did a woman's work tonight."

Lily blushed, and Remus could see that she was pleased.

"I love you, mom, dad," she whispered, then grinned wickedly. "And you really kicked ass!"

Dora grinned, and Remus felt the heat of an answering blush rise to his cheeks.

"We aren't just your old parents, we're war heroes, you know? Role models for all of you," he teased her.

Lily rolled her eyes.

"Goodnight, oh my role models," she said dryly, and walked towards the doors.

A few steps away, Hermione and Severus had claimed one of the wooden benches, still busy with Hogwarts' wards. Lily hesitated as she passed them, stopped, and turned towards them.

"Aunt Hermione?" She asked quietly, her voice not quite steady.

"Yes, dear?"

Hermione looked up, a wealth of emotions in her eyes. Remus shivered as he saw the fear of rejection outshining the rest by far.

Hermione was happy as far as he knew, still very much in love with Severus and doing useful work, leading exactly the sort of life she'd always wanted. She was accepted by her family, and handled the multitude of roles she chose to play with easy gracefulness.

But still there was this shadow on her soul, and sometimes it emerged to haunt her.

Remus prayed that his daughter wouldn't hurt Hermione, wouldn't make the same mistake so many of them had committed twenty years ago.

But hadn't he always claimed that his daughter took after her godmother in the cleverness-department?

"I've been having difficulties with my special Charms-project," Lily said quickly. "And I was wondering if you could help me with that?"

Hermione smiled, her whole face lit by relief and delight. Severus at her side smirked triumphantly. He had always said that Lily was a Slytherin at heart – the greatest compliment he had yet paid any of the children.

"Of course I will," Hermione answered warmly. "Write down your problems, and I'll send you a reading list. Perhaps you'd like to visit over the holidays for a day or two? Then we could work on the practical aspects."

"That'd be great," Lily grinned, saying so much more.

Again she hesitated, then reached out and pulled her surprised godmother into a tight embrace.

"You're the best, Aunt Hermione," she whispered, waved again towards her parents, and left the Great Hall with quick steps.

Remus watched her go with tears of pride in his eyes.

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Over night, winter had sneaked in and staked his claim on the Hogwarts grounds. The sky was overhang and grey, and nothing of the late-autumn warmth lingered in the air.

Minerva flicked her wand, and a warm shawl wrapped itself around her shoulders. There'd been too little sleep last night, what with caring for the students, reassembling the wards and clearing everything with the aurors.

The others had been a great help, of course, but there were things only the Headmistress could do, and now that she was short of a Deputy, the tasks seemed to have tripled.

Minerva sighed. William Gopman. Had she ever been so wrong in her life?

Harry had embraced her, and told her that all great Headmasters of Hogwarts needed to be wrong about their DADA-teachers, but still she wanted to hit herself.

She sighed. No use crying over spilt milk. If the past night had shown anything, it was that she could be thankful for a lot of things. Surely that balanced out the embarrassment that was William Gopman?

Minerva smiled as she watched the small group of Order members that she had seen off a few minutes ago cross the grounds towards the main gates.

This had been their strangest anniversary yet, but in a way the most fitting.

She had never quite forgotten the feelings of that time, the fear and anger and constant worry, but they had mellowed over the years, and she had thought that part of her gone forever. But Gopman's knife on her throat had brought it all back in an instant, and again she marvelled at the strength of her friends and family, at the determination and power that had carried them through the past.

She had seen that same strength, too, last night, and the men and women her students had become made her heart swell with pride.

So courageous and clever, so beautiful and fierce. They were her children in a way, all of them, and she couldn't have been prouder if she'd born them.

They would never change, she realized as she watched them reach the gates and disapparate, in groups or alone. They would rise to every occasion, master every situation, and they would come out of it whole, because they were a family in every way that mattered.

If last night had convinced her of anything, it was that the prize of their victory hadn't been too high. They had fought for their freedom, and they had earned it. They would earn it every single time, no matter what the future brought.

"They'll never change," she whispered, and laughed, and went inside to start the day's work.

The world never stopped moving, and their work would never end. She was glad for it.

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_The end_

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End file.
